The Liverpool Basque

by Helen Forrester

  Chapter Eighteen

  Micaela had returned from her visit to her Basque friend. Now, seated in her rocking chair with her sewing box beside her, she was stitching a button on to the neck opening of one of Francesca’s vests. She whipped round when she heard the hysterical crying.

  Both Manuel and she were filled with consternation, as Rosita threw herself on to her knees and buried her face in her mother’s lap to weep broken-heartedly.

  Micaela dropped the little vest on to the floor. ‘My dear! Whatever happened?’ She lifted her daughter up to embrace her.

  The boy was appalled. He had never seen his mother cry before. In dismay, he bawled, ‘Grandma!’ and crowded close to her as if to displace his mother and crawl on to her lap. Grandma was his lap, his rock, not his mother’s or Francesca’s. He, too, began to cry, as Micaela put out an arm to him.

  ‘It’s Father!’ Rosita sobbed. ‘What shall we do without him?’

  Their joint grief came out in a flood of tears, and it washed away some of both women’s misery.

  As their weeping began to subside, Micaela slowly let go of both Rosita and Manuel. She lifted the corner of her flowered overall and wiped Rosita’s swollen eyes, and then did the same for her scared, woebegone grandson. As she wiped her own face, she smiled slightly at Manuel, and said, ‘My goodness! We’re worse than a wet week, aren’t we?’

  She sounded a little more like the Grandma he had known before his grandfather was killed, and he smiled weakly back.

  Rosita stumbled slowly to her feet. ‘I’m sorry, Mam,’ she said to her mother. ‘The clerk in the shipping office was as rude as hell – he wasn’t the usual one – and it was the last straw.’

  Micaela pulled her handkerchief out of her sleeve, and handed it to her. ‘Never mind, my love,’ she comforted. ‘A good cry can set you up again.’ She tightened her arm round Manuel, and planted a firm kiss on his cheek. She then got up, her rocking chair swinging behind her with the suddenness of her movement. ‘Now, what we need is a good, strong cup of tea, and we’ll all feel better.’ As a faint wail came from upstairs, she added practically, ‘You’d better get Frannie up from her nap.’

  ‘Can I have a cup of tea?’ asked Manuel, with a sudden desire to be promoted to more grown-up customs. ‘I’m six, now.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Grandma, as she filled the kettle from the single kitchen tap. ‘You’re a big boy – you can have tea.’

  With Francesca on Rosita’s lap, contentedly sucking at an old ink bottle filled with milk and with a rubber teat on it, and Manuel sitting with them at the table, manfully sipping tea out of a mug, the women began to discuss what they could do to improve their financial position.

  As the house was quite big, they agreed that a couple of rooms could be sublet. ‘It would help to pay the rent,’ admitted Rosita, with a dry sob left over from the intensity of her weeping.

  Content that life seemed suddenly to be a little more normal, Manuel left half his tea and slipped down from the table to go out to play.

  Still anxious about Rosita’s storm of tears, Micaela tried to focus her eyes upon her daughter’s face, but it was difficult to see quite straight these days; everything looked slightly misty. She wished heartily that Pedro or one of her sons would dock. Why hadn’t Juan insisted that Leo stay in Liverpool? A home needed as many men as possible.

  Since Leo had left for Nevada, she had had only two letters from him, both of them not long after his departure. In neither of them had he seemed very happy about what he had found in his new country; he had said sarcastically that if he were to be a shepherd all his life – which seemed to have been the fate of other Basques he had met – he might just as well keep sheep in Vizcaya.

  After Juan’s death, Micaela watched eagerly for a letter; surely he would reply to their letters to him about the accident, however bad he normally was at correspondence. But there had not been a single word from him. Had something awful happened to him as well? And no one in Nevada to write to tell her about it?

  She forced herself to turn her attention to her immediate worries.

  ‘There might be a decent Basque boy who’d be glad of a clean place to lodge,’ she suggested to her daughter.

  Rosita responded glumly. ‘I haven’t seen a new face round here for months – the lads are probably getting ships out of Bilbao – they’d be safer in neutral ships. And some of them’ll be working ashore – places like Uncle’s foundry in Bilbao must be that busy with armaments, they’d take on anybody who came through the gates.’

  Micaela chewed her lower lip. She nodded agreement.

  The hinges of the front door squeaked, as the door was pushed wide, and they both turned as they heard the slow dragging steps of Maria coming down the passage. After Micaela had returned from her visit, Maria had slipped out for a gossip with an old acquaintance, who lived just round the curve of the street. Now, as she returned, she threw back her shawl from her greying, sandy head to survey them with sombre, watery blue eyes. She was swaying with fatigue from her tiny walk. As she noted the two women bunched closely together at the table, she inquired nervously, ‘Anything wrong?’

  Both women smiled, and Rosita said calmly, ‘No, we were talking, that’s all. Like a cup of tea?’

  When Maria had slowly seated herself on the sofa, and, with a thankful sigh, put her feet up, Rosita set a cup of tea on the small table beside her, and Micaela said, ‘We were thinking we could rent a couple of rooms – to help out. What do you think?’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ Maria responded, as she stirred her tea and eyed them suspiciously.

  Because she was sick, they did not habitually discuss family problems with her – as if, from her place on the sofa, she did not see most of what went on, she considered sardonically – and she resented this; she wanted to be part of the living world as long as she could. Though, at the moment, she was very tired, Micaela’s remark gave her a chance to be included, so she continued aloud. ‘Well, now, I’ve been up with Mrs Halloran, to see how her Eileen is – I don’t think her Eileen’s long for this world – and she mentioned that they’re going to extend the blacksmith’s workshop behind her house – and they’re going to pull down some houses at the back to do it.’ She put her cup down in her saucer with a loud clink, as if to express anger, and added, ‘No thought of the families living in the houses, of course!’ She paused, to ruminate.

  ‘Mother of God!’ exclaimed Micaela. ‘As if there isn’t enough racket already! Yesterday, the steam hammers started up and shook the table so much that the sugar basin was nearly jiggled off it – I caught it just in time.’

  ‘Oh, aye. It’s bad,’ agreed Maria. ‘And it’ll be worse. Just listen to the horses’ hooves at this minute. There must be half a dozen drays in the road – and every horse’ll have left us a little present, I’ll be bound.’ They all listened as, through the open front door, came the shouts of the draymen and the clack-clack of their clogs or hob-nailed boots.

  ‘Phew!’ exclaimed Rosita, and went to shut the door as the strong odour of new manure swept into the house, mixed with the permanent fishy smell from the sardine-packing plant nearby. ‘Those that go to sea don’t know what they’re missing!’ she said with a laugh, as she sat down again.

  Aunt Maria finally picked up again the original thread of her discourse. ‘Because of the new workshop, Mr Halloran’s brother, George, and his wife, Effie – you know Effie – have got to look for a place. Works for a brewery, he does – drayman on deliveries. They’d pay their rent, they would.’ She put down her teacup and coughed politely into her hanky.

  ‘Well, that’s an idea,’ Micaela replied diffidently. Having a woman in the house would mean her cooking on Micaela’s own kitchen range – which would cause problems.

  Maria was, however, secretly filled with glee, when Micaela reluctantly took her advice and arranged to rent the large first-floor room to Effie Halloran. Both the Halloran sons had volunteered for the Navy, so the couple felt that they would have plent
y of space in such a big room.

  Once they had moved in, there were the usual complaints between the women about the sink in the kitchen-living-room being full of each other’s sooty saucepans after cooking, and arguments about who was responsible for this or that bit of cleaning.

  Regularly, Effie would announce loftily and tearfully, ‘I’ll look for something else, I will. I’ll get out of here.’ But Mr Halloran would point out to his wife that cheap housing was almost impossible to find.

  ‘You can talk,’ Effie would spit back at him, her dark, careworn face wrinkled up in disgust. ‘Youse at work all day. It’s me as has to put up with Them.’

  Them, in the shape of Grandma, trying hard to get a grip on life again, insisted on a cleaned-up sandstone sink and fixed hours for each of them to use the kitchen oven. A disgruntled Effie held her tongue, as far as she could, and acceded.

  Though the women got on each other’s nerves, there were days when they would sit comfortably on the front step in the autumn sunlight, to discuss the latest hurried marriage in the neighbourhood, or the tragedies of local men killed – or worse, missing, presumed killed – in France or at sea.

  Effie Halloran could not read and Micaela read English only with difficulty, so Rosita would often read the Evening Express to them, after George Halloran had finished poring over the sporting pages to see if the horses he had backed had won.

  The reading, added to the gossip which George picked up, as he drove his cartloads of barrels of beer from public house to public house, meant that the women probably knew as much about the war as most local people did.

  As he hauled the empty barrels out of the pubs’ cellars, and then carefully rolled the full ones down to the pot boy waiting in each cellar, George heard, at second hand from the pot boy, numerous seamen’s stories of what was happening at sea; and he sometimes regaled Effie with them, as he ate his tea. Occasionally, an innkeeper would stand him half a pint of beer to replace the perspiration he had lost in heaving heavy barrels about, and they, too, would pause to discuss the latest news.

  ‘We don’t know half of what They’re up to,’ George would often say sagely to his wife. ‘They don’t tell us nothing.’

  Though George Halloran was much surlier and less knowledgeable than Grandpa, he was stout and reliable-looking, and Manuel adopted him as part of the family. He also enjoyed being petted by Effie.

  Effie missed her boys. ‘It’s as if something’s been cut off me,’ she would explain wistfully to anyone who would listen to such an insignificant shawlie.

  Micaela and Rosita regarded her as much beneath them; they had considerable pride in being Basques, and in being literate. Poor Effie’s pride consisted in keeping her room well scoured and being able to boast that both her boys were in the Royal Navy. She kept her head bowed and hoped only that her lads would survive the war.

  Rosita admitted to Maria that she had been correct in saying that the Hallorans would pay their rent. Effie knocked at the kitchen-living-room door every Friday night, and silently proffered the opened rent book, with five shillings in silver balanced precariously on it.

  In late October that year, when Manuel was beginning to look forward to Guy Fawkes Day, a weary and dirty Pedro walked into his home. Hastily stuffed into his back pocket were Rosita’s letters; they had been brought on board by the Mersey pilot, who had come to take his boat up the river to Liverpool. Already exhausted by a long, difficult voyage, he was greatly upset by the letters’ contents.

  As he entered the kitchen-living-room, he was greeted and fussed over by his womenfolk – even Maria broke her iron rule and clung to him and kissed him again and again on the cheek. He sat down thankfully close to the fire to rub his icy hands by the blaze, and accepted a mug of tea, heavy with sugar, as yet unrationed.

  He was surprised when tiny hands grabbed his serge trousers, as Francesca crawled towards him and tried to pull herself up to stare at the new arrival.

  His mind cluttered with weariness and bad news, Pedro stared back. Then a delighted grin creased his face, as he looked down at a tiny replica of his Rosita with the same wide blue eyes and tiny tendrils of bright-red hair.

  He forgot his fatigue, put down his mug and grabbed her up to hug her with joy, despite a sopping wet nappy. He looked over the child’s head at his wife, and both of them laughed.

  ‘She’s the spitting image of you,’ he told her. And then he asked, ‘Where’s Mannie?’

  ‘He’s playing next door. He’ll be in for his tea in a minute.’

  Micaela laughed when Pedro ruefully realized how wet his daughter was. She said to the child, ‘Come to Grandma, and I’ll change you. You’re making your daddy all wet.’

  Rosita came over to stand by him; she felt shaky with the relief of his safe return after such a long voyage. She gently caressed the back of his neck. ‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked. ‘Did you get our letters?’

  ‘The pilot brought them aboard today,’ he replied heavily. He looked at Micaela. ‘I’m so sad for you,’ he said to her, and stretched across the fireplace to catch her hand in his. ‘It must have been awful for you. I nearly had a fit when I read your letter. What happened exactly?’

  Micaela did her best to control a fresh bout of tears, while behind her, Maria, humped up on the sofa with two shawls round her, bent her head over her teacup and shook with suppressed sobs.

  Pedro looked anxiously at them. Both women looked as if a good gale would blow the pair of them to Kingdom Come. Even Rosita didn’t appear too well. What a bowl of trouble it all was. He wanted to weep himself; but men can’t cry. He badly needed a good meal and his bed, and some clean clothes to put on – he had not had his clothes off for days.

  ‘It was a true accident,’ Micaela told him dully, her veined eyelids drooping to hide her agony of mind. She was still haunted by the fact that it was she who had urged Juan to do a job which, she felt, should have been done by a younger man.

  After Micaela’s cracked voice had faltered through the story, Rosita took Francesca from her, and herself changed the child on the table. She glanced back at her husband and said, ‘You look as if you’ve been in the wars. Where’ve you been, luv?’

  Pedro picked up his mug of tea again, and drained it. ‘All over the bloody Atlantic,’ he told her exasperatedly. ‘Afraid of subs – and miles off course. They shouldn’t have sent us to New York in the first place.’

  ‘New York? I thought they always did the west coast of Africa, and that way?’

  ‘Oh, aye. Most times that’s what we do. Not this time! We went from New York up to Halifax and Montreal. Then back south again to Charleston and then to New Orleans. I’ve been down as far as Argentina. The fellas were getting desperate that we’d never get home again, with one thing and another.’ He rubbed his tired eyes. ‘The war’s changed everything.’ He felt in his pocket for his cigarettes, took one out and lit it, while the women watched in silence. Then he said, ‘Finally, we got a cargo for Liverpool, and were we thankful! But we had such foul weather and were blown so far south that the Ould Man was worried about coal being enough, never mind whether we’d be spotted by German subs.’

  Rosita was worrying about what she was going to give the unexpected arrival to eat, but she said, ‘You poor dear. Was the ship damaged at all?’

  ‘She’s got one or two nasty cracks in the deck. She needs a good overhaul. The Ould Man and the Chief are talking in the office now – and they’ll not be mincing their words. She’s that old, she’s near falling apart, she is. They want a refit.’

  Rosita was still holding Francesca. She put her free arm round his shoulders, and he leaned against her. He wanted her.

  ‘The company’ll fire them for speaking up like that,’ Micaela said nervously. ‘Even a ship’s master must mind what he says.’

  ‘Not nowadays,’ he said with a sudden grin. ‘They’re getting short of men. Too many gone into the Navy – called up from the Reserve.’

  Rosita put Francesca down on
the floor again and the child crawled away on her own small voyage of exploration. Her mother was anxious. It was unlike Pedro to complain seriously about anything. He carped occasionally, like all seamen did but it did not mean much; like his mates, he had a doglike patience and endurance, an acceptance of the dangers of his calling and of company parsimony. Now she felt sick at the thought of enemy submarines meeting a boat that probably could not travel at more than ten knots; it would be a sitting duck. As if in agreement with her apprehensions, the baby within her kicked quite energetically.

  She pulled herself together, and said firmly, ‘I bet you’re hungry. I haven’t got a lot in the house, but I’ve got bacon and eggs – and fried bread?’

  He nodded. ‘That sounds good,’ he assured her.

  Manuel came wandering in in search of tea, and greeted his father exuberantly. Now Daddy was home everything would be all right, and Aunt Maria would stop bursting into tears every time you looked at her.

  Micaela made herself get up briskly. ‘What about a wash and a shave,’ she suggested, ‘while Rosita gets the tea?’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ Pedro responded, with feeling. He put his young son down from his knee. ‘Go and get the bucket from the outhouse,’ he told him. ‘We’ll fill it from the oven tap, and I’ll go up and have a good wash.’

  Obediently, Manuel went to collect the enamel bucket always used for this purpose and set it in the hearth under the shiny brass tap of the hot water tank. He squatted down and turned on the tap; it belched a thin stream of nearly boiling water. While he watched it trickle into the bucket, he wondered what his father had brought him this time.

  Later, Micaela refilled the tank with cold water from the tap over the sink because Pedro forgot to do it.

  ‘How long will you be home, Pedro?’ Micaela asked, as she stretched upwards to lift some dinner-sized plates from the dresser shelf.

  ‘Depends on what the Ould Fella fixes with the bosses,’ he responded morosely. ‘Maybe a few weeks.’