The Liverpool Basque

by Helen Forrester

  Juan had not been very busy with emigrants during the summer: the threat of war had made people hesitant to travel overseas; its outbreak, and the subsequent sinking of three British cruisers by a single German U-boat, had, apparently, confirmed the nervous fears of many who had intended to emigrate; they deferred their crossing of the Atlantic in a British ship.

  Juan was, therefore, thankful to be given something to do. He got up from his chair, opposite Maria’s couch, and, on the top bar of the fireplace, knocked the dottle out of his clay pipe. Maria was thankful to see him go. The smoke from his pipe had been bothering her; but nobody dared to tell Juan that he could not smoke in his own kitchen-living-room; he had a fixed idea that only cigarette smoke was bad for Maria. Maria sometimes wished fretfully that he would go back to sea and take his pipe with him.

  In the rain-soaked, brick-lined back yard, Grandpa viewed the damage, while Grandma stood behind him, her arms crossed over her stomach. The rain had stopped, but both could clearly see the water dripping from the hole left in the gutter after the collapse of the drainpipe. Below it the rainwater barrel was brimming, a length of drainpipe protruding from the water. At a point level with Grandpa’s eyes, a further piece of pipe was still fairly firmly affixed to the wall by a clasp. A third piece, rotten from rust, had fallen into the yard, and Manuel joyfully picked it up and staggered round the yard, blowing into it as if it were a trumpet.

  The old man peered up at the sodden wall. ‘Tush,’ he exclaimed irritably. ‘The whole pipe must be absolutely rusted out – and that wall needs repointing. You’d best tell Fleet, when he comes for the rent – show him it.’ Though his words were firm, he knew and Micaela knew that the landlord’s agent would never do anything about it. He and Leo had done innumerable repairs themselves; now he wished the younger man was still at home, to get out the heavy ladder, mix the cement, try to find a reasonable piece of piping in some builder’s yard and fix it up. He was acutely aware of his own ageing, his lack of physical strength, as he turned towards the back door.

  Micaela looked up at the louring sky. Though she was resigned to the house being persistently damp, she knew that the loss of the drainpipe would rapidly worsen it.

  ‘It looks as if it’s going to rain a lot more,’ she said doubtfully to her husband’s back. ‘Couldn’t you somehow knock the pieces together – use an old tin to join them and some rags for binding them – just to hold it for a few days? I’ll ask Roy Fleet when he comes next Friday.’ Her husband had stopped and turned to face her, a hand on the doorjamb. She urged him again. ‘More water in the cellar’s going to soak the coal – not to speak of the kindling I’ve got down there.’

  He did not reply, and she realized suddenly how he had aged recently, but she continued, ‘With the wall so wet, the plaster’ll fall off the big back bedroom – it’s got holes in it already.’

  Manuel had paused in his trumpeting, to listen to his grandparents. Now he said generously, ‘I’ve got an old pineapple tin – my spare marbles’re in it. You can have it.’ He looked eagerly up at Juan; helping Grandpa mend a drainpipe could be fun.

  Juan glanced down at the boy, and grinned. Then he shrugged, and said to his wife, ‘All right. Get me some rags – and plenty of string. Manuel, you get the tin – I’ll need more than one – and I’ll see what glue or paint I’ve got to hold it all together. Have you got any more tins, Micaela?’

  Grandma and Rosita hoarded everything; very little was ever thrown away. It did not take them long to produce a large ball of string, made up of short pieces knotted together into one strand, a remarkable pile of rags, neatly torn into squares for patching or for dusters, and three largish, round tins, in which they had been storing bits of candle grease for starting the kitchen fire, a button collection and Grandma’s hairpins. While they scraped out the grease and found another home in old jam jars for the buttons and the hairpins, Juan fetched an extendable wooden ladder from under the lean-to next to the lavatory in the yard. He extended it to its fullest length, and, in the narrow space between the house and the brick-walled lavatory, he managed to lean it against the wet wall.

  ‘I’ll take a look at the gutter itself, first – before I put a lot of work into mending the pipe – it’s probably rusted, too – it mayn’t take the weight of the tins and the rags, as well as the drainpipe.’

  He climbed slowly up, while Micaela held the bottom of the ladder, and Manuel watched, fascinated. Rosita, busy peeling potatoes, tried to look upwards through the kitchen window.

  Through the open back door, she and Maria heard her father call down fretfully, ‘It looks too far gone to do anything about.’ A small hail of rusty bits of metal descended past the window, as he felt along the gutter. Micaela looked up and stepped back hastily to avoid getting flying bits into her eyes. Her husband leaned over and gave a sharp tug to the gutter a bit further along. It held.

  ‘Humph,’ he grunted, and shifted his weight on the ladder.

  ‘Watch out, luv,’ shrieked Grandma suddenly, and Manuel, alarmed, ran back towards the kitchen door.

  There was a cracking sound. Not a big sound, recollected Old Manuel, but a deadly one, as the three top rungs of the ladder came out of their sockets.

  Grandpa’s wet boots slipped, and the ladder swayed badly. He grabbed at the gutter. It came away in his hand. Wrongly pitched in the narrow space, the ladder swayed outwards from the wall. Grandma leapt away, as Grandpa came crashing down. As he fell his head hit the edge of the slate-tiled lavatory roof, cutting off his scream. He slid down the sloping roof and landed on the ground with a heavy thud and a splash of water from the puddles. His head lay at an impossible angle.

  Micaela did not cry out. A paralysed Manuel watched her sink slowly to her knees by the stricken man. Very gently she lifted his head. As she touched him, his life went out of him and his body relaxed. As a horrified Rosita squeezed her way past a clutter of chairs in the crowded kitchen and Maria cried out in alarm, she curled her arms tenderly round his face. ‘My dear,’ she whispered. ‘My dearest dear.’

  Manuel awoke from his shock. ‘Mam,’ he yelled to his mother. ‘Mam!’

  A frantic Rosita had caught the bow of her apron on the knob of the dresser drawer. She tore at the apron string, freed herself, and pushed Manuel to one side, as she flew into the yard, to stand, appalled, looking down at her parents. Micaela lifted a face to her so empty of expression that she might have been dead herself. ‘The ladder gave way,’ she said simply. ‘He’s gone.’

  Rosita wanted to scream. She swallowed hard, trying to control her panic, and fell on her knees by Micaela. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked her mother desperately.

  ‘Yes.’

  Manuel began to whimper. His mother turned her head towards him, and said as calmly as she could, ‘Auntie Connolly’s out, I know. Run up to Mrs Saitua’s and tell her Grandpa’s had an accident. Ask her to come quick – and to bring any of her boys who are home. Understand? Don’t cry, luv.’

  Manuel nodded, and began to move towards the door. ‘Wait a minute,’ Rosita called. ‘Then I want you to go across to the vicarage, and ask Father Felipe to come – or any of the priests. Run, sweetheart.’

  As if he had not heard her properly, he paused to stand and stare at her, not understanding why Grandpa lay so still. His mother’s face, however, was a ghastly white, and she was trembling. He himself began to shake.

  ‘Run, dear. Run, quick. It’s urgent!’

  He dragged himself uncertainly through the kitchen door. Then, ignoring his aunt’s cries of, ‘What’s up?’ he made himself run, through the house, down the steps, round the curve, pushing past three girls bouncing a ball against a wall. He ignored their furious cries as they retrieved the ball from the flooded gutter, and panted his way up Corn Hill.

  He paused for a second in front of the Saituas’ open front door, to get his breath, and then took the two front steps at a bound.

  Mrs Saitua was scrubbing the living-room floor, her black skirt hitched u
p and tucked into its waistband. Her fat bottom was draped by her grubby white petticoat and from under it protruded the dirty, callused soles of her bare feet.

  At Manuel’s precipitous arrival, she sat back on her heels, and quickly turned a scarlet face dripping with perspiration.

  At the sight of the gasping small ghost of a child, she dropped her scrubbing brush and stumbled to her feet. ‘What’s up, duck?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s Grandpa. And me mam says will you come quick.’ He paused to gulp a breath. ‘And bring Domingo and Vicente with you.’

  Madeleine Saitua had already shoved her feet into a pair of down-trodden carpet slippers, and, before he had actually finished speaking, she was shouting up the narrow staircase for her boys to get up quick. ‘Something’s happened at the Barinètas’,’ she yelled.

  Manuel was already on his way out of the front door, when she turned back to him to say, ‘Tell your mam I’m coming.’ She was hastily straightening her bundled-up skirt.

  ‘I’ve got to get Father Felipe,’ Manuel panted.

  ‘Jesus Mary! What happened?’

  ‘He fell off a ladder,’ replied Manuel, and flew down the steps, to race up the slope to the vicarage.

  As he stood on tiptoe to bang the knocker on the priests’ door, he was sick with fright. He leaned against the wooden door, and nearly fell in when it was opened by the housekeeper.

  ‘Be careful, lad!’ she snapped, as the child caught at her black, serge skirt to steady himself. She spoke in Spanish.

  He looked up at hard brown eyes in an equally brown face, and burst into tears.

  In Basque, he howled, ‘I’ve got to get Father Felipe.’

  ‘Be quiet. Father’s busy. What’s the matter?’

  Manuel’s Spanish was, as yet, limited. He did his best to control his sobs and to gather the words he needed, but they would not come. He continued to howl and the housekeeper continued to scold in Spanish.

  The ruckus brought a priest from a back room. Manuel did not know him, but the long cassock and sandalled feet were comforting. ‘It’s Grandpa,’ he wept to the young man. ‘And me mam says to get Father Felipe quick.’

  The housekeeper grudgingly gave way to the priest, who squatted down on his heels until his face was level with the child’s. ‘Don’t cry,’ he said in stiff English. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘He fell off the ladder – and he’s lying in the yard – and Mam says to get Father Felipe.’

  The young priest’s face immediately became very grave. ‘Wait here a minute,’ he said. ‘I’ll get Father Felipe. What’s your name?’

  Manuel told him.

  Father Felipe was commendably quick. He gathered what he needed in order to administer Extreme Unction, took Manuel by the hand, and together they hurried down the narrow, black streets. ‘Did your mother send you for the doctor?’

  ‘No,’ panted Manuel. He was a little surprised at the question; when you fell down Mam bandaged you up – or, maybe, Mrs Connolly, who was very good at it.

  The priest’s dark face looked suddenly more lined than usual; he glanced compassionately down at the child who held his hand so confidently; the death of the man of the house in this desperately poor neighbourhood was a particularly terrible loss. He hoped he was in time to administer the Last Rites.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As she knelt beside her mother, Rosita’s stomach heaved and she feared she would vomit. Her breath came in short gasps, as she made herself cautiously slip her hand under her father’s pullover to feel for a heartbeat. She could not find one, so she took his limp wrist to feel his pulse.

  Nothing.

  She put her arm round her mother’s bent back. ‘I’m sorry, Mam,’ she said brokenly.

  Her mother did not answer her; it was as if she had forgotten her daughter’s presence. Even when Maria, clutching her flannel nightgown modestly round her, crept into the yard in bare feet and knelt down on the other side of her, Micaela seemed unaware of her daughters. Her whole being was focused upon her husband, as if she believed that if she kept on crooning to him, he would come round from being stunned; yet it was clear from what she had said that, somewhere in her shocked mind, she understood that he was dead.

  ‘What happened?’ whispered Maria. She was shivering with cold and fear. ‘Is he dead?’

  Rosita nodded. She laid her cheek on her mother’s back, and hoped she would not vomit; her current pregnancy was not proceeding as comfortably as the earlier ones had and, most mornings, she felt nauseated.

  ‘Please, Madeleine, come quick!’ she prayed, as she waited for Madeleine Saitua to arrive.

  Maria began to cry, the slow, helpless crying of the very weak. Through all her painful, hopeless illness, her father had been the pillar of her life; her mother nursed her, but her father had ungrudgingly provided a home for her. ‘Even extra milk,’ she moaned aloud.

  A little startled, Rosita lifted her head. Maria saw the movement, and rubbed the tears out of her eyes, as she explained. ‘He thought of everything for me – even more milk.’

  ‘He did,’ replied Rosita in a low voice. ‘He looked after us all.’ She hugged her shocked mother more tightly, while beyond the brick wall of the yard, the riveters continued their merciless clangour, and beneath her the puddle in which she was kneeling slowly soaked through her heavy, serge skirt. Would Madeleine never come?

  Her agitated thoughts leapt fearfully to the future, as the import of Maria’s words sank in. Pedro would now be the sole breadwinner; he would have seven people to maintain, if she included the baby now on its way.

  Still in her carpet slippers, Madeleine Saitua laboured up the front steps and ran through the open front door and through the kitchen-living-room to the back door. She was a heavy woman, unused to moving fast, and she had to pause for a moment to catch her breath, as through the back door she observed the three women kneeling round Juan.

  ‘Looked like something out of a church window, they did – and him so peaceful,’ she said that night to an acquaintance in the Baltic, while she enjoyed a sustaining glass of port and considerable attention from other customers, always interested in a tragedy.

  Now, however, she was forced into action.

  At the sound of the scurrying flip-flap of her carpet slippers as she descended the back steps, Maria shuffled round on her knees to see who was coming; through her flannel nightgown the rough bricks hurt her knees, and her whimpering became a loud wail.

  Very shaken, Madeleine peered down at Juan and at her old friend, Micaela. There was no doubt in her mind that she was looking at a dead man; the angle of his head indicated that quite clearly.

  Rosita scrambled to her feet. She was so white that Madeleine was immediately alarmed that she would miscarry.

  She did not want another catastrophe on her hands, so she said sharply to her, ‘Take Maria in and wrap her up by the fire. And get yourself a glass of water – and sit down. I’ll take care of your mother – the boys’ll be here in a minute – they’re just putting their kecks on – lucky they’re both home – Domingo’s on the evening shift this week – and there’s no hurry for Vicente on a Saturday.’

  She bent over Micaela who had ignored her arrival. She said soothingly, ‘We’re getting help, luv. It won’t be a minute.’

  Taking Rosita’s place, she squatted down on her heels and put her arm round the mourning woman. Then she leaned forward and firmly closed the dead man’s eyes. She looked up at Rosita, who had taken her shivering sister’s arm and lifted her to her feet. ‘You’d better call the doctor,’ she advised.

  ‘It’s too late,’ responded Rosita dully. She tugged Maria’s arm. ‘Come on, now. Be brave. Come on – indoors.’

  Still wailing, Maria turned towards the house. Rosita bent down to stroke her mother’s white hair, trying frantically to think how to comfort her. ‘Manuel’s gone to fetch Father Felipe, Mama,’ she told her, her voice choking on the words.

  Her mother made no response. She continued
to sit with her husband’s head in her lap and to stroke his cheek, while she muttered brokenly, ‘My dear, my dear.’

  Mrs Saitua sighed. She did not argue about the need for a doctor, though she knew someone would have to tell the coroner of the accident; Juan was, indeed, beyond medical aid. In a minute or two reality would strike Micaela; she would be wild with grief; and there was the chance, also, that Rosita might begin to miscarry. She hoped there was some whisky or brandy in the house. Maybe Father Felipe would insist on the doctor’s being called, she thought anxiously, as she muttered to Micaela, ‘There, there, luv. There, there.’

  She was thankful when, almost immediately, there was a distant knock on the front door, followed by the tramp of hob-nailed boots. Her sons burst into the yard, one of them still struggling into a navy-blue pullover.

  ‘Christ!’ Domingo exclaimed. ‘What’s to do, Mam?’

  Their mother looked up at them fiercely. ‘Hush!’ she admonished. ‘Juan’s had an awful accident. Lift him into the house – put him on the couch in the sitting-room. Gently, now!’

  She turned back to Micaela. ‘The boys are going to carry Juan into the house, dear. They’ll be very careful of him. Now, you come along of me.’ She put her hand under her friend’s chin and made her turn to look at her. ‘Come on, luv. The rain’s starting again.’

  The shaken young men edged round the two women. Domingo very cautiously lifted the dead man’s head away from Micaela’s lap. Micaela glanced at him in bewilderment.

  Madeleine stood up and put her hands under the armpits of the tiny kneeling woman; then, bracing herself, she eased her to her feet. It was like lifting a sagging sack of potatoes. Micaela’s eyes were on the boys, who were used to shifting heavy weights. As they picked up her husband she saw the pity in their eyes. The agony of her loss struck her and she opened her mouth and screamed.

  The terrible shrieks roused her neighbours. They whipped their shawls over their shoulders and shot out into the street. Bridget Connolly was standing on her step, about to open her front door. She froze at the sound of the scream.