The Liverpool Basque

by Helen Forrester

‘Me dad’s a Master Mariner, and he’ll get you when he does come home,’ cried Manuel furiously. ‘So there!’

  The youngest of five unruly boys, Andrew was the offspring of a Filipino and an Irish girl, who lived in a nearby street. Nearly a year older than the young Basque, he enjoyed lording it over the smaller lads in the vicinity. Now he made a lewd gesture. ‘My dad’s a stoker, and he’s stronger ’n yours. He’s stronger than anybody in the world!’

  Too angry to care that he was probably stirring up a hornet’s nest, Manuel went a step closer. He thrust his chin towards Andrew and ground his teeth menacingly. He snarled, ‘No, he isn’t! And you cheated! I want me bluey back.’

  Andrew pushed his face close to Manuel’s. Blue eyes, bloodshot with conjunctivitis, glared into clear brown ones, as Andrew made the worst grimace he could conjure up. ‘You’re not getting it back, see. You shut up, or I’ll put me brothers on to you!’ He stepped back, and grinned. ‘Me dad showed us how to break a man’s arm real quick last night.’ To demonstrate, he did a vicious twist with his right hand.

  Apprehension cooled Manuel’s rage; he was scared suddenly of being beaten up by five known bullies. He glanced quickly around in search of adult help. None was visible.

  Brian Wing, even younger than Manuel, had been watching Manuel’s defiance of Andrew in silent astonishment. Now, he squatted quickly down on his heels and began to pick up those of his marbles still on the pavement. Deftly, he shovelled them into a cotton drawstring bag. Manuel knew that he was preparing to run back home to the laundry, if a fight should start; Brian did not worry about being called a cowardy custard. When trouble threatened, he was the first to vanish. At this moment, as he rose to his feet, he was beaming amiably at both prospective combatants, his eyes thin slits above pudgy cheeks.

  Manuel glanced again at Andrew. With a satisfied smirk, the bigger boy had taken the blue out of his pocket, and was holding it up to the sunlight. Manuel snatched unsuccessfully at it, and Andrew laughed.

  Brian fled.

  From round the curve of the street suddenly floated Grandma Micaela’s strident voice. ‘Manuel! Manuel Echaniz! Where are you?’

  With total relief, Manuel edged back from Andrew, and shrieked, ‘Coming, Grandma!’ Then he turned and ran for home. It left Andrew in command of the field – but, Manuel solaced himself as he tore back to the safety of Grandma, he now had nobody to play with.

  Thanks to Grandma’s calling him, his retreat was an honourable one; even Andrew would admit that. When mothers called, you responded fairly promptly. If you did not, you got soundly slapped the minute you showed your face at home – and there was always the overwhelming threat from the females of the family, ‘When your dad gets in, I’ll tell him about you!’ Fathers whacked much harder than mothers did; they sometimes took their belt to you.

  Grandma bent to catch him in the curve of her arm. ‘Come along, dumpling,’ she said in Basque. ‘We’re going up to the market. Your dad’s docking tomorrow; and your mam wants to have chicken ready for him when he gets home.’

  ‘Do I have to come?’ asked Manuel in a whining voice. He had been to school, had his tea, and had then gone out into the street to play, only to find himself up against Andrew. He was tired, and the thought of the long, boring walk up to St John’s Market made his legs ache.

  ‘Yes, dear. With Auntie Maria only just out of hospital, she can’t watch you. Who’ll take care of you while we’re out? Your grandpa’s gone over to the Baltic for a game of chequers and a drink.’

  With the threat of Andrew and his brothers still in his mind, Manuel saw the point of this, and made no further demur.

  On her return from the hospital the previous day, Manuel had watched his spinster Aunt Maria being laid carefully on the old sofa in the big kitchen-living-room, so that Grandma and Mother would not have to run up and downstairs to and from her bedroom while nursing her.

  She was his mother’s elder sister, and she and Manuel were great friends. She had taught him to play snap and snakes and ladders, and she usually took care of him whenever the others were out.

  Now, back home, she was exceedingly quiet, her face white and haggard, except for a single hectic pink spot on either cheek.

  It was called convalescence, which Manuel understood was another word for getting better. But he had noticed that all the ladies who had crowded in to see her during the last twenty-four hours looked sad, and sighed. ‘TB’s a terrible thing, God save us,’ they had murmured to each other. Then they had spoken to Auntie Maria in bright, artificial voices.

  Even seventy-eight years later, as he wrote about them in his Canadian home, for Lorilyn, he could still remember clearly the black-clad women, their arms wrapped in their woollen shawls, despite the summer heat, while they smiled determinedly and chirruped like birds, as they bent over the stricken invalid.

  Grandma took his hand and led him up the worn sandstone steps into the soot-blackened house, to see if his mother and two of her Basque friends were ready to set out.

  Rosita was just wrapping Manuel’s new baby sister, Francesca, into the folds of the black shawl she wore. He felt a sting of jealousy at the baby’s privileged position in his mother’s arms; she had usurped his place. Admittedly, Grandma had been particularly kind since Francesca’s birth – but Grandma was kind to the baby as well.

  As he waited in the crowded kitchen-living-room for the women to marshal themselves, Aunt Maria put out a bone-thin hand and held his fingertips, as she smiled up at him. Manuel looked down at her. Neither said anything, but Manuel found it consoling that he still appeared to be his aunt’s favourite; she had never even held Francesca in her arms, as far as he was aware.

  It was always a matter of earnest debate between Grandma Micaela, Rosita and Aunt Maria whether it was better to go to the market early in the morning, when there was lots of choice; or to go at the end of the day, when it was possible to beat down the prices of wares which vendors did not want to have to take back home. Since a live chicken was as fresh in the late afternoon as it would have been in the early morning, they had decided to go at the last possible moment.

  Aunt Maria felt well enough to be disappointed that she would miss the excitement of the market, and she said wistfully that she wished she had an invalid chair to go out in.

  Grandma grunted. Invalid chairs were beyond the dreams of avarice, so she said comfortingly, ‘Never mind, dear, save your strength for tomorrow. We’ll get you up and dressed in time to greet Pedro when he arrives. He’d be so happy to see you up and about – so you mustn’t tire yourself today.’

  Mollified, she allowed Grandma to prop her up with another cushion and put an extra shawl around her, though the day was warm. With a glass of water, her spectacles and her rosary on a stool by her couch, she settled down resignedly to await their return.

  By the time the four chattering ladies reached the beginning of the narrow lane at the back of the market, where poultry was sold, Manuel’s feet were dragging through the straw which littered the cobblestones. Fine beads of perspiration lay on his forehead, and he clutched Rosita’s black skirt, in order to keep up with her. The smell of poultry droppings and other manure lay like a blanket over the crowded lane, and was not improved by the intense odour of dozens of unbathed women, who sat amid their goods for sale. He felt stifled and began to grizzle.

  Amid the din and the thick black skirts flapping round him, his wails went unremarked. Men and women shouted, puppies yapped, ducks quacked; fouled in their own excrement, kittens mewed pitifully and scratched at the bars of their cages; next to a cage of clucking hens, a lone goose hissed at passersby. Only rabbits crouched quietly, their quivering noses a tiny indication that they were still alive, despite the heat.

  The approach of a small group of Basque women, chattering loudly in their own peculiar language, did not raise the hopes of the purveyors of poultry. They, too, were hot and weary. An impending Basque invasion made their spirits wilt: if the women bought anything, it woul
d only be after strenuous bargaining; it would surely make any stallholder they fastened upon late home for his tea.

  After strolling the length of the still busy lane, the target of the Basque attack became a small cage holding three hens, which appeared not to have sold because they were rather scrawny. Before showing any direct interest in the birds, Grandma Micaela led a distracting minor scrimmage by examining carefully a pair of rabbits. She poked at them through the bars of their cage, and they stared back at her without hope. She drew Rosita’s attention to them, and she also poked disparagingly at them. Rosita’s two friends, who had accompanied them, pursed their lips and agreed loudly with one another that they weren’t worth sixpence each. The man in charge of them said something inaudible under his breath.

  Sighing, they looked desultorily at a pair of slaughtered hens, not yet cleaned or feathered, hanging heads down in front of the next small stall.

  ‘Here ye are, ladies,’ called the stallholder, beaming at them. ‘A real nice dinner. Good fat birds. One and sixpence each. Feather ’em yerself.’ He unhooked the hens and held them against his forearm for inspection. Four ladies pinched the hens’ breasts and declared in chorus that they had no fat on them.

  The man lost his amiability as quickly as it had been assumed; the price he had asked was fair for two good birds. ‘Pack of bloody Israelites!’ he muttered, and turned angrily away to accost another shopper.

  Though Grandma’s eyes were weak and she could not see any of the products very well, prompted by Rosita, she opened negotiations with the man who had three live hens. They were, apparently, the last of his offerings for that day; several empty cages had already been piled on a hand-cart behind him.

  ‘What do you think, Mother?’ Rosita asked.

  Grandma bent down to squint carefully at the hens. One of them tried to peck her, and she hastily drew back. She nodded her head negatively, and said dolefully, ‘They might make good soup. Nothing on them for anything else.’ She glanced up at the vendor. ‘How much do you want for them?’ she inquired, her English difficult to understand.

  ‘How much?’ interjected Rosita. Her two friends stood behind her, politely silent, ready to murmur approbation or denigration, as required.

  ‘A bob each,’ he told her, hoping to get rid of three birds in one sale, so that he could wander off for a much-needed pint of bitter, before going home.

  Rosita translated the price, and Grandma’s heavy eyebrows rose, as if in shock. ‘For those?’ She turned to their silent friends for confirmation of her horror at such an outrageous price. Like a Greek chorus, they nodded agreement and stared coldly at the stallholder. Still holding his mother’s skirt, Manuel scrubbed one small boot against another, and sighed; he had seen this pantomime so often. He watched a woodlouse, surprised by his shuffling feet from under a few wisps of straw, hasten into hiding beneath a couple of feathers.

  Meanwhile, the face of the chicken vendor went as dark as an angry cockerel’s comb. ‘Wass the matter with ’em?’ he asked indignantly. ‘Best roastin’ chicken you could buy. Why, one of ’em would feed six, easy.’

  Manuel saw his mother’s generous chest expand, as she readied herself to dive into the fray. It was going to be a long and boring battle. He let go of her skirt and wandered down the sloping lane for a few yards, to look at ugly white dishes laid out on straw; they were tended by three Irish women from the north end of the city.

  ‘Mind your clumsy feet!’ one of them shouted at him, as he stumbled over a cobblestone. He backed hastily away; to a small boy, they seemed very big and threatening.

  Further down, towards Elliott Street, there were still a few puppies for sale, and he paused to watch them, as they stumbled over each other in the dirty cage. In the background, he could hear his mother arguing volubly, as she sought to bring down the price of the hens; she was demanding that they be taken out of the cage, so that she could feel how much flesh there was on the unfortunate creatures.

  He was wondering if he could persuade his father, when he came home, to get him a puppy, when there was a chorus of female shrieks accompanied by a roar of male anger. He jumped, and whipped around to see if his mother was all right.

  His view was blocked by a large woman with a shopping basket on her arm. He tried to edge around her. She looked down kindly at him, and said, ‘Careful, sonny, mind the pile of saucepans behind me.’ Then, at a slight noise, she glanced back. ‘Holy Mary!’ she cried shrilly, and jumped to one side, sending the pile of iron saucepans in all directions, so that cursing market women leapt to their feet to avoid them.

  Flapping awkwardly on clipped wings, a terrified, squawking hen sailed over their heads. The poor bird was unable to gain any height and came down to earth, momentarily, in front of Manuel. He laughed, and instinctively grabbed at it. It managed to scuttle a few feet away from him towards Elliott Street. Then, seeing a break in the highly amused crowd, it took off again in a series of desperate hops and flaps.

  Manuel forgot his mother. Hens lived in cages, so this one must have escaped. In high glee, he scampered after it, dodging in and out between piles of kitchenware and ironmongery. He bumped into two young men entering the lane. ‘Watch it, kiddo!’ one shouted after him, irritably.

  Driven by panic and despair, the hen managed to soar upward a little. Absorbed in the chase, Manuel ran faster.

  As the bird descended, to perch for a moment on top of a fire hydrant in busy Elliott Street, the boy plunged across the pavement towards it, tripping up and confusing the crowd of office workers hurrying homeward. A young clerk made a playful grab at the bird, to the amusement of the girl accompanying him. The frantic hen immediately hopped off its perch on the edge of the pavement, and staggered into the heavy traffic, as if to cross the road. Intent on catching it, Manuel shot after it.

  The hen ran directly under a work horse pulling a small cart. The horse reared in fright. The cart skidded past Manuel. It missed him by a hand’s breadth, as the carter swore and fought to rein in the animal. A few yards behind came three errand boys on their bicycles, hurrying to finish the last deliveries of the day. They swerved to avoid the child. Two of them collided and tumbled off, the packages in their front baskets scattering amid both lines of traffic; the third boy managed to reach the gutter, and dismounted; he yelled imprecations at a heedless Manuel, while more cyclists wobbled and dodged around the two bikes tangled in the middle of the lane. Two chauffeur-driven private cars came to a screeching halt, and the drivers impatiently blew their klaxon horns.

  All traffic was coming quickly to a halt; and harsh words were exchanged between drivers and carters in the near lane, as horses, set to breast the upward slope of the street, were hauled to a clattering stop, their shoes striking sparks from the setts, and foam from their mouths splattering passersby.

  Nobody attempted to rescue Manuel – or the hen.

  At the sight of the traffic coming the other way, he had, in the middle of the street, suddenly ceased his headlong chase; he could see that, on the other side, the hen had found a safe perch on the high windowsill of a bank.

  With disorganized traffic still edging past him, both before and behind, he was suddenly very frightened. As he stood frozen, at the back of him the driver of a carriage with two ladies in it, leaned down, whip in hand, and shouted at him, ‘Gerroff the street!’ He glanced up over his shoulder, and the high wheels, far higher than him, rolled past him dangerously closely. He turned back towards the opposite pavement. A tram, unable to stop quickly, rolled slowly past him on its rails. It was followed by a brewer’s dray which had been successfully slowed by the drayman; it was pulled by two huge horses and the dray itself was piled high with barrels of beer. Though the upward slope meant it would be hard to start the horses again, the driver drew to a careful stop, thus blocking any further traffic in that lane. He stood up and called to the frightened child, ‘Get on pavement, luv. Quick, now.’

  Though all Manuel could see was the slavering mouth and huge, bronze-colou
red legs of the lead horse, he heard the voice, and he obediently trotted, almost under the great animal’s nose, to the safety of the pavement.

  As the traffic began to move again, he stood, bewildered, on the kerb, and looked up at the hen. From the safety of the bank’s windowsill, the hen opened its eyes and looked down at him with grave suspicion; then, the lids closed again.

  Distraught, the child began to cry.

  Standing against the bank wall, an elderly newspaperman was calling to the homegoing crowd of pedestrians, ‘Echo! Liverpool Echo! Read all about it!’ Perspiration was running down his bulbous red nose, as he shoved a neatly folded newspaper into any hand proffering the necessary coppers for it. On a blackboard beside him was scrawled the day’s headline, Countess of Derby Opens Crippled Children’s Hospital.

  He glanced down at the weeping child, while saying to a customer, ‘Fourpence change, Sir. What’s to do, lad?’

  ‘I want me mam,’ howled Manuel, hastily taking refuge beside the news-vendor’s second blackboard, which proclaimed in white chalk, Big Fire at Huskisson Dock. ‘And I can’t reach me hen!’ He pointed upwards to the refuge on the windowsill.

  The newspaperman squinted quickly upwards, and grinned. The hen had squatted down, eyes still closed, and looked like a bundle of feathers. ‘That’s yours? Not to worry, lad. Soon as this little rush is over, I’ll get it for yez. It don’t look like it’s goin’ to fly away.’

  Manuel nodded, wiped his nose on the sleeve of his jersey, and continued to weep, though at a lower pitch. He had no idea where he was, and he didn’t really care what happened to the hen; all he wanted was his mother.

  Meanwhile, Rosita and Grandma had assumed that Manuel was still in the market lane, looking at the pets for sale, and had contentedly bought the two remaining live hens. The stallholder, still fuming over the loss of the third hen, sullenly wrung the birds’ necks, while Grandma went to the nearest greengrocery stall by the door of the main market, and bought onions and garlic.