The Liverpool Basque

by Helen Forrester

  If his mother had not already been hard at work on her cutlery boxes, she might have noticed that he turned left along the street, instead of right; if she had seen him, she would have come flying after him to inquire where he thought he was going, since school lay in the opposite direction.

  Manuel had no intention of going to school that morning. To make him less obviously a truant schoolboy to any passing police constable, he had put his St Francis Xavier cap into his plain brown satchel.

  Bearing in mind Domingo Saitua’s suggestion that he should find a ship’s steward who might look out for a job as pantry boy for him, he was now marching determinedly along Chaloner Street to see Mr Ganivet in his chandlery warehouse. It was just possible that Mr Ganivet himself might give him a job; but, in any case, he had recalled from a conversation at Arnador’s house, that the chandler sometimes did business with stewards; Mr Ganivet had been telling his wife about a steward who had returned fifty teapots, because the spouts dripped so badly on the white linen tablecloths of his First Class dining-room.

  Considering that everybody the boy knew was complaining how bad times were, the Ganivet warehouse was very busy. At the loading bays, horses and carts vied with two snorting lorries trying to back in; and men in thick cotton aprons shouted to each other, while a closed pantechnicon eased out of the double gates.

  He stopped one hurrying youth to ask where the office was – Mr Ganivet always referred to working in his office. He was directed to a narrow stone, corkscrew staircase which wound up through the centre of the eighteenth-century building.

  At the door of his office, Mr Ganivet, his face nearly purple, was shouting at a bald-headed wisp of a man in a beige cotton jacket, who during brief gaps in the shouting said humbly, ‘Yes, Sir,’ or ‘No, Sir.’

  Manuel loitered at a discreet distance in the wooden-floored passage until the exchange petered out and the reprimanded man had zipped past him, looking very chastened. Mr Ganivet continued to stand at the door of his office, trying to regain his breath. As the high colour in his face subsided, he noticed the boy in the passage.

  ‘Good gracious, Manuel! What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in school?’.

  Seventy-odd years later, Old Manuel remembered vividly his sense of panic at the question fired at him. Of course, he should have been in school. Mr Ganivet began to roll down his shirt sleeves over his hairy arms, as Manuel gaped at him, unable to speak.

  The older man turned into the littered, dusty office, glancing back over his shoulder at the white-faced boy. ‘Come in, come in, lad,’ he ordered not unkindly. ‘What’s up? Shut the door and have a seat.’

  The chandler plonked down into a wooden, swivel chair beside a roll-top desk.

  All the way up Chaloner Street, Manuel had rehearsed what he was going to say. Now the words tumbled out breathlessly. ‘I’ve got to leave school at the end of term, Sir, because Mam can’t afford to keep me any more – I’ll be fourteen in September – and I was wanting your advice, Sir, about going to sea. A friend of mine suggested I should get in with a steward, who might give me a chance. And I thought that, one day, maybe, I could be a steward myself.’ He paused to take breath and to glance up at Mr Ganivet.

  With a pencil Mr Ganivet was tracing circles round the edge of an invoice, so Manuel continued. He had been speaking in Basque, feeling that this made a connection between himself and the man at the desk. He now said, ‘I remembered that you did business with stewards and cooks and people, and I wondered if you could recommend me to someone?’

  He had hung his head as he spoke, fearing a quick dismissal, and all Mr Ganivet could see was the smooth dark crown of his head. ‘As a pantry boy,’ he finished hopefully.

  ‘Humph.’ Mr Ganivet fiddled with his pencil. Then he heaved a big sigh, which made his waistcoat, with its gold watch chain hung with seals, rise and fall like a slow wave on the Mersey. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I had hoped to see you go to university with Arnador. I believe that’s what your dad hoped for you?’

  ‘He never said anything to me, Sir, except that he wanted me in school until I was sixteen, but it’s impossible; he’s not here any more – and neither is my granddad.’ The boy raised his head, and Mr Ganivet surveyed the long gaunt face with its flat cheekbones, the wide quirky mouth and rather deep-set brown eyes. A fine face, the chandler thought, almost that of a grown man; but no sign of a beard yet. He felt uneasy about what might happen to such a fine-looking boy on a long sea voyage, if he were not under the close supervision of a more senior crew member. It would not do for him to sign on without a family man to keep an eye on him, he decided.

  The silence between them deepened. It was finally broken by Manuel, who said shyly, ‘I want to thank you, Sir, for helping to keep me at school since Dad died – Mother told me about it yesterday. It was very kind of you, Sir, and I really don’t have any right to ask you for more help – but I don’t know which way to turn.’

  Mr Ganivet responded to the boy’s thanks with a little smile, and then asked, ‘Do you want to go to sea?’

  Manuel was surprised by the question. ‘Never thought of doing anything else, Sir. All our family went to sea.’

  Mr Ganivet nodded. The boy had obviously never had the advantages of advanced education pointed out to him; perhaps, in the circumstances, it was as well.

  He put down his pencil, and said, ‘You were welcome to the small help with your schooling; I would’ve liked to continue it – but I have to prepare for Arnador’s going to university – and I can’t do both.’

  ‘It’s not expected, Sir.’

  Mr Gavinet ignored the interruption, and went on, ‘I can imagine the difficulties of your mother, and the need for you to earn. And, of course, at sea you would be fed, which would ease her burden. Of course, you’d have to pay for your kit.’

  There was a knock on the office door, and the bald man in the beige jacket entered. ‘The cordage has just come in, Sir,’ he told Mr Ganivet nervously.

  ‘Well, fill Ellerman’s order. Send it in the big lorry – they’re waiting on it. And hurry, man. Hurry!’

  ‘Yes, Sir. Of course, Sir.’

  The door clicked shut, and the chandler turned back to Manuel. ‘Get me a written recommendation from your headmaster and bring it to me. Meanwhile, I’ll see what I can do. I can’t make any promises, and it may not be in catering.’ He got up from his chair, to indicate the end of the interview. ‘I’m not sure what I can do for you, so be thinking what else you might do.’

  Manuel got up. He smiled, and said with enthusiasm, ‘Thank you, Sir. I’m very grateful.’

  As they walked together to the door, Mr Ganivet smiled back, and ruffled the boy’s hair. He wished that Arnador had something of his friend’s warmth of character.

  A week after Micaela’s visit to her to borrow two shillings, Claire walked down to Wapping to see Micaela. The streets she traversed seemed smaller and meaner than they used to be when she had lived there with her first husband. The pavements were more littered, and the noise and foul odours from the factories and workshops were more intense.

  As she knocked on the open door and a flustered Micaela called to her to enter, her heart sank. The house stank as it never had done in earlier years, the hallway blackened with soot from coal fires and tobacco smoke. She walked determinedly in, however, to find Micaela lying on a sofa in a muddled kitchen by an empty fireplace.

  She laughed at Micaela’s distress at not being able to offer her even a cup of tea, and said she had just dropped by for a moment to offer Manuel a part-time job.

  She had squeezed out of Ould Biggs a Saturday morning’s employment cleaning out the stables – their present man was getting old – and occasional help with putting the horse to and other odd jobs in connection with the bigger funerals, like polishing the hearse and the carriages.

  Micaela jumped at it, with the thought that the boy’s first wages – sixpence an hour – must go to paying back the two shillings she owed Claire.

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nbsp; So after Manuel had done his early-morning paper round and had had his breakfast, he went once a week to help Ould Biggs, who found him very useful, and sent for him several times during the weeks that Manuel was looking for regular work, to help with funeral processions.

  Claire always gave him a huge mug of cocoa and a thick slice of bread and butter; and he would stand in the yard and gratefully consume these delicacies.

  Sometimes, he would dream of a time when he would be able to keep some of the money he earned – and take Mary Connolly to a music hall matinée – and buy his mother and Bridget Connolly pretty quarter-pound boxes of chocolates.

  If it had not been for the Second World War, when she joined the Forces and met a Polish soldier who married her, I might have married Mary myself, considered Old Manuel. She’d have made a good wife for a seaman. As he considered whether he should mention, in his notes for Lorilyn, the upheavals of the civilian population during the war, he was very slowly digging over his vegetable patch; the soil was waterlogged and heavy.

  He paused to lean on his spade and catch his breath; digging was difficult. Next year he would get a man to do it for him. He smiled grimly to himself – perhaps he should say, if he were here next year, he would do so. He felt that time was running out, like water dripping from a leaky tank, drop by drop. Maybe he should visit Ramon and Arnador in Liverpool this year – and after a rest there, go on to Vizcaya; it would be wonderful to see the Pyrenees again.

  In the midst of his meditations, he was surprised when Sharon Herman came quickly round the side of his bungalow.

  ‘Hi!’ she greeted him cheerfully. ‘I came to collect some stuff from Veronica’s house, but she isn’t home – so I thought I’d pop in to see how you are.’

  Old Manuel grinned at her. ‘Fine,’ he assured her. He pushed his spade into the loam, so that it would stand upright, and said, ‘Come in. It’s getting chilly out here.’

  Over a glass of wine, she thanked him for a piece of fish he had left for her with one of her new neighbours in the apartment block. He smiled and shrugged. ‘It’s nothin’,’ he said.

  Sharon’s eyes wandered round the sitting-room, while she considered what she should say next, and came to rest on a beautifully cased sewing machine, and she wondered about the woman who had sat at it, or had sat in the bay window to hand sew in a good light.

  ‘Do you have any kids?’ she asked him suddenly. ‘Besides Faith – you mentioned her once, I think.’

  The question was a personal one, and he sipped his wine, while he thought how to answer her. Then he grinned. ‘Only Faith – and I don’t suppose she wants to be regarded as a kid. She’s forty-six. I’ve got a granddaughter, though – she’s going to be an electrical engineer, she tells me. She’s at the University of British Columbia.’ Pride in Lorilyn made him more talkative, and he took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. Then, remembering that Sharon might smoke, he proffered her the packet. ‘Seems as if girls has gone off nursing or teaching.’

  Sharon refused the cigarette, and endured, with amusement, the smoke that slowly surrounded them.

  He told her that he had decided to go home this summer, and she asked lightly where home was. England or Spain?

  He hesitated, and then said, ‘Both, I guess.’

  They began to talk about a trip he and Kathleen had done the year before she was taken ill, and as he described it he grew slower.

  He’s tired, thought Sharon guiltily. I should not have come; and yet she did not want to stop his talking. As far as she knew, he had nobody to talk to.

  He rubbed his eyes, and she was distressed to see that they were filled with tears. His chin trembled, and he hastily pulled a Kleenex from a decorated box on the table beside him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘It takes me back a bit, talkin’, like.’

  She crossed over to sit by him on the settee, and put her arm round the bent, thin shoulders. He did not brush her off, but wept quietly into a bunch of paper handkerchiefs.

  She felt a great, unreasonable anger that his daughter was not by him – or even his clever granddaughter. Such grief should have been allowed to express itself long ago. She tightened her hold on him, and he tried to control the explosion. But he could not.

  ‘Just cry,’ she said very gently. ‘I do understand about these things.’

  Families don’t have the experience of dealing with bereavement, she thought, trying to drown her sense that his family should have helped him more. Death isn’t all round them like it used to be – or like it is with me. They have no experience to draw on.

  She held him quietly, gently rubbing his back with her arm, as if he were a sick animal, until finally he drew a big sobbing breath, and said, ‘I’m proper sorry. I don’t know what came over me.’

  As he leaned forward to pull some more handkerchiefs from the box, she let him go, and he added, ‘When I were a little kid, people died all round you; you accepted it. I should have got used to it.’ He shoved the damp handkerchiefs into his shirt pocket, and then went on, ‘Doctors was different, though, in them days. They knew you – they came to your house; and I’m dead sure they helped those in pain go more quickly. And then they stayed a while, to comfort the family like, and the neighbours came in and out to see you was all right. And the priests were there …’ He cleared his throat, and said in a less wistful voice, ‘If you had to manage without a doctor, there was always neighbours to help – like Bridget – I think I once told you about her.’

  She smiled softly. ‘Yes, you did,’ she said. ‘And don’t worry about crying. Even men should cry good and hard sometimes. And we’re friends, aren’t we?’

  ‘For sure,’ he said, as he slowly stood up in front of her. He had a desperate need, suddenly, to go to the bathroom, but he was too shy to admit it. After her last remark, she had playfully held out her hand to him, and now he slowly shook it to cement the friendship. When she rose, feeling that she was dismissed, he held on to her hand and then leaned forward and gently kissed her cheek.

  ‘Thank you, my dear.’

  She smiled again, and asked, ‘If you go to Liverpool, have you any family there to take care of you?’

  ‘I’ve got Ramon, me cousin. I’ll stay with him. And I’ve got me old friend, Arnador Ganivet – better’n a brother, he’s bin to me, all me life.’

  ‘Go soon,’ she advised, and kissed his withered dark cheek, and left him.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Manuel’s hopes of help from Mr Ganivet began to fade, and there seemed to be hordes of boys vying for jobs as errand boys or office boys in the city. He haunted the Sailors’ Home in hope of picking up a berth as deck boy or pantry boy, without success.

  He discussed with his mother the idea of applying to de Larrinaga on the grounds that his father had served them. He was surprised when she did not immediately agree. When she did answer him, she said heavily, ‘His discharge book went down with him.’

  When he protested that they would have a record in their offices, she told him uneasily that it did not seem to be a good idea. She was, in fact, superstitiously afraid of history repeating itself, and that he would go down like his father; the idea was ridiculous, and she knew it, but she could not shake it off. She said, ‘Well, you know, he wasn’t with them very long.’

  He could not shift her.

  Mr Ganivet had not been idle, however. He had spoken on the boy’s behalf to two regular customers, and the result was that, in September, a few days before his fourteenth birthday, he sailed in a large freighter, as galley boy. The ship was carrying a mixed cargo for Havana and the southern United States. He was under the tutelage of the chief steward, the cook, two galley men and a cabin steward, none of them very patient.

  Old Manuel often laughed when he remembered the first time he went to sea, proudly armed with his own discharge book and a straw-stuffed palliasse for his bunk. He had considered himself the most overworked, bullied youngster ever to sail in a ship, though he might have had a different opini
on had he had a father to tell him what to expect. As a little boy he had been taken down to the docks to see his father’s ship and he had sailed to and from Bilbao; but being a member of the crew, he found, was different; he had forgotten that, though it might be considered romantic to go to sea, it was a rough and dangerous occupation, where men had to be able to depend on each other a great deal. Further, he had spent the last few years mainly amongst women and gentle priests which did not help his adjustment to the harsh reality of seafaring.

  In truth, though the freighter was an old, coal-burning ship, it was well run; and Mr Figgin, the steward, despite being an accomplished nagger, took good care to see that he was not sexually abused or knocked about on the long, slow voyage.

  The cook, an ageing black man with a strong Glasgow accent, was good-natured, and supplemented the indifferent food supplied to the crew with bits left over from the officers’ mess. Manuel soon learned to call these small treats ‘ovies’. It seemed to Manuel, however, that everyone was quick to cuff him if he lingered too long in his journeys up and down companionways and along the heaving passages, often armed with slopping mugs of tea for officers on duty.

  If, when sweeping or scrubbing, he missed a corner, the galley man would upbraid him in the richest of Liverpool language. Anxious to keep in with the cook, he learned to peel his way through sacks of potatoes at a commendable speed, and to wash dishes without chipping them as the water in the sink sloshed about with the movement of the ship. He also learned to watch carefully, during bad weather, that he was not hit by a boiling saucepan skidding off the stove; a ship’s galley could be a very dangerous place. He hated every job he was given.

  The dark, silent, morose cabin steward called Jimmy was of uncertain racial origins. He came from Swansea, and, when he did find reason to speak, he had the sing-song accent of South Wales. When the boy was sent to help him, he would be ordered to fetch this or carry that – as if I were a Labrador dog, Manuel thought indignantly. Helping Jimmy, however, took him into the officers’ quarters, and, when he saw them, he decided that compared with being crew, an officer’s life must be pure paradise.