The Liverpool Basque

by Helen Forrester

  The crowd in the lane was thinning rapidly; the Irish women were packing up their remaining plates; some of the disconsolate, unsold pets had already been whisked away. Manuel was not visible, and Rosita became anxious.

  To save her carrying the baby around unnecessarily, her two friends ran the length of the lane, but there was no place in which he could have hidden. They came back panting and gesticulating.

  ‘Who you lookin’ for?’ asked a young woman, hooking a cage of kittens on to the handlebars of a bicycle, near the Elliott Street entrance.

  Rosita told her.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ she replied readily. ‘He were nearly run over, he was. You’ll mebbe find ’im across the road. I’ll bet you’ll find ’im in the station there – kids love trains.’ She smiled, and mounted her bike and wobbled over the cobblestones in the general direction to which she had pointed.

  ‘Oh, goodness!’ Rosita exclaimed, her face paling, as, united, the four women pushed their way to the edge of the Elliott Street pavement. A break in the traffic revealed Manuel, with his mouth as wide as a choir boy’s singing a Te Deum, shrieking, ‘I want me mam.’

  Rosita’s expression changed immediately to one of parental outrage. With baby Francesca bouncing on her chest and followed by the other three, shawls flapping like the wings of angry magpies, she surged through a break in the traffic, to face her tear-stained son. Before the child could do more than turn his face to her and reduce his sobs, she scolded him, ‘What do you mean by running off like this? We bin scared stiff for you. I’ll tell your dad about you, when he gets home!’ With her free hand, she grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him.

  Far from being more upset by this, Manuel recognized the typical reaction of a mam who had indeed been scared. His sobs became sniffs, as she alternately cajoled and scolded again.

  Meanwhile, Grandma Micaela, who was feeling extremely tired, looked on silently, and the news-vendor asked her, ‘Do you want the ’en, Queen?’ He pointed up to the bank windowsill, on which the hen lay inert.

  Grandma blinked, and her eyes followed the line of the man’s finger. She peered at the bank wall. Halfway up, she saw a vague, copper-coloured lump. ‘On the windowsill,’ the man said impatiently.

  Grandma was under five feet tall; the sill was impossibly high up for her. ‘Could you possibly reach it?’ she asked shyly.

  The man grinned. ‘Anything to oblige a lady,’ he responded with sudden gallantry. He reached up and managed to gather the bird into his hand. After inspecting it dubiously, he said, ‘It looks like dead, Missus.’

  ‘It’s fresh enough to cook,’ she told him, with a little laugh. Her faded blue eyes, though partially clouded by cataracts, still had a twinkle in them, and the news-vendor returned to his pitch feeling pleased with himself.

  Grandma laid the hen on top of the other two in her calico bag. Rosita had finished her scolding and was wiping Manuel’s face with the corner of her apron. Her friends stopped gossiping about the high price of rabbits – and the party straggled down Hanover Street towards home.

  At home, the oil lamp had been lit. Grandpa was seated at the kitchen table, writing in his ledger. Behind him, on the wall, the huge map on which Pedro recorded his voyages, glimmered softly, the net of inky lines linking the ports of call looking like a tangled mass of black cotton thread.

  As the shoppers entered, he closed the book wearily. He nodded to his wife and to Rosita, as they entered and thankfully plonked the shopping bags on the draining board by the kitchen sink. The baby was beginning to whimper from hunger, and Grandma said she would make a pot of tea before starting the evening meal. Rosita nodded agreement, and sat down in a rocking chair. She unbuttoned her black blouse and modestly arranged her shawl round the baby’s head and her breast, while she fed her new daughter.

  Manuel slunk to the other side of the fireplace, where Aunt Maria had, in their absence, established herself in an easy chair. He leaned against his aunt, who put down the knitting she had been struggling to do and put her arm round him. He was grateful for her presence; he had missed her during her stay in hospital.

  He could not have articulated his sense of desertion as he watched his mother feed the baby. He only knew he longed to be cuddled by her and to lay his head on her milky breast. Not even when she called him her big boy, and sent him off to school with a loving pat on his behind, was he comforted.

  Auntie Maria suddenly began to cough. She withdrew her arm, and fumbled for her handkerchief in her dressing-gown pocket. She put it to her mouth, and tried to smile at Manuel over its folds.

  As she had taught him, he stepped back from her while the spasm lasted. ‘I don’t want to splutter all over you,’ she had once explained to him. ‘It’s not very nice.’

  Aunt Maria’s cough was part and parcel of Manuel’s childhood; he slept in the same room as she did, and the sound of it comforted him when he woke in the night after a bad dream; it meant that she was awake, and if he were very scared, he could scramble out of bed and run to her. It puzzled him, however, that, unlike his mother, she would never let him into her bed, however much he was shivering with fright; and she was the only one of his doting relations who did not kiss him; even Grandpa kissed him sometimes. He occasionally thought that he would never understand the idiosyncrasies of grown-ups.

  After feeding Francesca, Rosita laid the dozing child in Manuel’s old cradle, near the fireplace, but far enough from it not to be spattered by the fat in which Grandma was frying fish for tea. She then unpacked the three hens and took them out into the brick-lined backyard, to feather and singe them. Though the stallholder had obligingly wrung the necks of the two hens, he had complained sourly that he would not have lost the third one if Grandma had not insisted on the cage being opened. He could not run after the flying bird himself, he said bitterly, because it would have meant leaving his stall untended in an area where petty theft was a fine art.

  After the meal, the hens were brought in and drawn on the draining board, giving Manuel an early lesson in anatomy, as he watched the operation.

  The naked birds were then washed and hung up in the larder overnight. Manuel stared up at them, and decided they did not look much different from Francesca, after she had been bathed in front of the kitchen fire.

  That night he dreamed that he had been hung up in the larder, by his feet. He was too terrified even to run across to Auntie Maria’s bed, and he lay quivering under his cotton sheet until sleep overtook him again.

  Chapter Eight

  In the golden summer days of 1914 his view of his world was that of a child, considered Manuel. His was a permanent world which Grandpa Barinèta would rule for ever. Ample food arrived on the table at least three times a day, and boys did their best not to offend Grandma Micaela or Mother, who ruled the kitchen-living-room like royal queens.

  Close by his home was the world of school, where nuns in white wimples and long black dresses talked of eternity and the need to be a good Catholic boy; so that when one died – an event which would take place so far ahead that one could not envision it – one could, in a state of grace, enjoy eternity sitting on the right hand of God, where, hoped Little Manuel fervently, there would be no nuns with sharp voices and spanking rulers to tell you that you had been naughty again. He had secretly wondered if God liked nuns. Old Manuel reflected that the latter thought had seemed so wicked that he had hastily stifled it and had hoped that St Peter would not make a note of it.

  At the edge of his world, not counting St John’s Market, lay St Peter’s Church in Seel Street, where, every Sunday morning, he went to Mass with either Grandma or his mother. Though the conversation of the congregation was split between Spanish, Basque and English, the Mass was said in Latin; his father said that it did not matter which port he was in, the Mass was always there, always the same – in Latin. Little Manuel began to think that there was something magical about Latin.

  Some of the priests were Jesuits and good scholars. Scholarliness was not something p
articularly appreciated in the dockside parish, but the Jesuits’ awesome reputation as missionaries, many of whom had come to untimely ends in foreign parts, gained them a grudging respect. They always made Little Manuel feel nervous. They seemed so disciplined; and he could not imagine them sneaking off to see a music hall show or having a drink in the local, like any normal human being.

  At home, he took for granted the constant work which engaged Grandma and his mother, how they washed and scrubbed and cooked, knitted and sewed, in a house with one cold-water tap and no electricity or gas. In addition to their usual chores, they endured the house being periodically filled with emigrants, all wanting to prepare food, wash clothes and cope with husbands and babies.

  He never considered that his grandfather might be very tired and long to retire, but could not because he had never been able to save much; or that he might be homesick for his native country. It never occurred to him that his father had any feelings beyond affection for his son – and a curious desire to lie on her bed with his mother, with the big iron key turned in the doorlock.

  It seemed a very safe world, though Mother sometimes announced herself worried. Exactly what she meant by that, Little Manuel was not very sure, except that it manifested itself in the form of a sharp slap if he did not come straight home from school, and an irate warning never to go with a strange man or accept a sweet from one; the vague warnings of dire results, if he ever took a sweetie from a stranger, remained with him long after he understood what lay behind them, so that even as an adult he always refused a proffered sweet.

  The fear of unemployment must have haunted his father, considered Old Manuel. Some of his friends’ fathers were out of work from time to time; and their mams grew short-tempered, and hoped they would not have another baby that year.

  Mr Connolly, who lived next door with his wife, Bridget, and little Mary and Baby Joey, was periodically without employment. But he was more cheerful than his neighbours, and he would sit on his front doorstep and play simple hand games with Manuel and Mary. It was he who taught the little boy how to catch and throw an old tennis ball. He was so good at lip-reading that it was a long time before Manuel understood that he was deaf, the usual fate of ships’ scalers, who spent their working lives inside ships’ boilers chipping away at accumulated scale, a job which created tremendous noise.

  Pedro was fortunate in being steadily employed by a small freighting company sailing out of Liverpool, though he always hoped that when times improved he would get a better ship. When he was at home for a few days, he would take Manuel swimming, or up to the park to play ball. Sometimes, they walked down to the Pier Head, and, looking out across the river, he taught his small son how to identify the ownership of the vessels plying the river, by the colours of their funnels. Manuel also learned that each country had its own flag fluttering from ships belonging to it; when he and his father got home, they found the countries on the big map pinned to the wall of the kitchen-living-room.

  Pedro had a shrewd eye for what might interest a boy and told him stories about the ports he had visited, including small details which Old Manuel still remembered, like the kind of sweets on sale in the streets of Bombay or the kind of clothing that ladies in Yokahama wore.

  ‘You’ll see them all yourself, one day,’ his father assured him, certain that his boy would follow in his footsteps, though with better qualifications.

  As he wrote for Lorilyn, Old Manuel wondered if Faith would remember him with the same uncritical love with which he remembered his father. He doubted it; his Canadian wife and child seemed to live lives crammed with commitments. They were far too busy to spend much time listening to what had happened to him in his last absence from them; they appeared to exist deep in a women’s world of school, voluntary work, dancing classes, music lessons, skating classes, teas and ladies’ bridge parties. Sometimes, Kathleen did a spell of nursing which gave her a whole new collection of women with whom to become involved. Men seemed to be expected to keep to their world and not intrude – even to their half of a room, if they were at a party, Manuel remembered with a rueful smile.

  Perhaps it was his own fault, he thought. Even when he had become a marine architect, he had sometimes been away for weeks. As a seaman from a family of seamen, this had not appeared unusual to him; but it had probably made Kathleen and Faith cling more closely to each other for support.

  He sighed, and paused in his writing to light another cigarette. He had got to know Kathleen in her final illness better than he had ever known her before, and, in his current loneliness, he regretted that he had not tried harder to be closer to her in their earlier married life. They had not been unhappy, he considered, just not quite as happy as they might have been.

  In marrying a Canadian and settling in Canada, Manuel had achieved a much higher standard of living than he could have reasonably hoped for if he had stayed in Liverpool. After qualifying as a marine architect, he had worked in Montreal, and he had had to acquire a working knowledge of yet another language, French; it had added to the difficulties of adjusting himself to North American life.

  After enjoying the close support of an extended Basque community in Liverpool and Bilbao, he had been, for a time, intensely lonely. It was some time before he met anyone who knew what a Basque was, and he remembered his intense thankfulness when he met a sprinkling of fellow Basques and could speak his own language to them. His neighbours were supremely indifferent that he could switch in and out of four languages – being multilingual was something that born Canadians were not supposed to worry about; English-speaking Canadians seemed to take it for granted that even their French compatriots would be able to speak English – just as the Spaniards expected the Basques to be competent in Spanish, thought Manuel tartly.

  Though sometimes he tripped up, for Kathleen’s sake he made a great effort to sink into her world. He had, however, done his best to teach Faith to speak Basque, and as a little child she had always spoken to him in that language – until she went to school, when, under the tight conforming pressure of her school life, she had soon discovered that it was convenient to forget that her father was an immigrant.

  As he worked on his notes for his granddaughter, Old Manuel wondered if his quiet, capable father felt like a stranger in his own home, when he carried a kitbag full of grubby clothes up the steps of Grandpa Barinèta’s house, at the end of long boring weeks at sea in a tramp steamer.

  Was it difficult for Pedro Echaniz to re-establish a rapport with his wife and mother-in-law and his rather forbidding father-in-law, all of whom seemed to talk to him at once?

  Mulling over his memories of his father sitting in the crowded kitchen-living-room, smoking his pipe and listening to the chatter, Old Manuel realized that, sometimes, it may have been quite hard; only when he was alone with Little Manuel had the dam burst, and Pedro himself had talked and talked, creating a fabulous world of distant places and homespun philosophy for his small son. God keep him, prayed Old Manuel, with a surge of love.

  The day after the three chickens had been carefully prepared for cooking, Pedro had run up the steps of his father-in-law’s house. The front door was hospitably ajar, and through it wafted an excellent smell of cooking – olive oil, garlic, onions, herbs and chicken. How good it would be to eat some decent food!

  In the narrow hall, he slung his kitbag to the floor and threw down his heavy jacket and peaked cap.

  ‘Rosita!’ he shouted, over the clamour of the riveters in the workshop immediately to the rear of the house. Dear God! How could she stand that kind of noise all day long? ‘Rosita!’

  She heard him and came running, plump face beaming and blue eyes flashing, her mass of wavy red hair bouncing round her shoulders. She flew into his arms, and, over the odours of cooking and babies, he smelled the freshness of her. He always swore to himself that every time he returned home he fell in love with her again.

  Before the family caught up with them, he hugged and kissed her, cupping one breast in an eager
hand, feeling the dampness of her milk soaking through her starched flowered pinafore.

  She giggled happily; seconds of privacy were precious in a house full of relations – and often with emigrants as well.

  He dropped his hand, as his tiny mother-in-law came pattering after her daughter, followed closely by Grandpa Juan Barinèta. Behind them, Manuel stood shyly by the kitchen door, waiting to be noticed.

  Over his wife’s head, Pedro greeted his parents-in-law; he was struck by how old they seemed suddenly to have become. He was fond of both of them, and was thankful that Rosita had their company while he was at sea.

  With a twinge of anxiety for the old people, he loosened himself from Rosita, to bend and kiss Micaela’s cheek. He then embraced Juan.

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ Grandpa said, keeping his arm round the younger man’s shoulder. ‘Come in, boy. Come in.’

  Pedro moved down the passage, and then saw Manuel. He stopped and squatted down close to him. ‘How’s my big lad?’ he asked, and opened his arms to him, and the boy went joyfully into them. There was the feel of his father’s beard on his cheek, the smell of sweat and tobacco and wine, the total comfort of his being.

  Manuel chuckled in his father’s ear, and said shyly that he was all right.

  In the steamy kitchen, Pedro stretched himself and looked around the familiar domain. Auntie Maria shyly and carefully rose from her chair to greet him; she was dressed in her best black skirt and black silk blouse. Jet earrings hung against her cheeks.

  ‘Maria! You’re up and about!’ exclaimed Pedro, as if he had already been primed by Grandma what to say to the stricken woman. Without hesitation, he went to her and put his arm protectively round her shoulders, as she subsided again into her chair, and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘I thought you would still be in hospital.’

  She glowed, as she looked up at him with frank yearning. Why tell him that she was at home because the doctors could do no more for her?