The Liverpool Basque

by Helen Forrester

  Sometimes Old Manuel laughed quietly to himself, as he remembered those times. Not all seamen spent their earnings riotously when they were ashore. Rosita and Uncle Leo had been absolute Tartars about his saving money. Just like Grandma Micaela, Rosita drew their allotments and collected the residue of their pay for them when they arrived home, gave them each back some pocket money, took out an agreed amount of housekeeping and banked as much as she could, against the day that one of them failed to get a ship. She dealt similarly with Francesca and Maria, when they began to earn.

  Uncle Leo never married again, though, for many years, he had a widowed lady friend whom he solemnly took out for a drink every Saturday night that he was in port.

  It was too comfortable to last, Old Manuel thought, with hindsight. Life never remains static; it’s almost impossible to forecast anything – unless you are a demographer, of course!

  In 1937, with the family bank account in a healthy state, Rosita and Leo had persuaded him to stay ashore for a time, and add to his qualifications by taking another course or two at the College of Marine Engineering.

  He had agreed, and, thanks to a lot of reading while he had been at sea, he was not finding the work too difficult. Walking home from college, one June afternoon, whistling ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’, he was feeling very content. He was looking forward to going to the Playhouse with Arnador; since they both had to be careful about money, they always sat in the sixpenny seats at the back of the balcony.

  As he turned into his own tree-lined street, basking quietly in the late afternoon sunshine, he stopped dead.

  In front of his home stood a black car, a very rare sight in Toxteth.

  His heart jumped. Was it a doctor’s car? Had something happened to Maria? As a baker who worked nights, she was the only one at home in the daytime.

  Galvanized by sudden fear, he sprinted down the street.

  The front door was open. He shot inside, and was met by a flood of voices speaking Basque and the sound of a howling child. To his astonishment, his way to the living-room, whence the noise came, was blocked by a customs officer, fidgeting uneasily, cap in hand.

  He looked round, as Manuel halted behind him.

  ‘Whatever’s up?’ Manuel demanded, a little breathlessly.

  At the sight of the new arrival, the customs officer’s face showed considerable relief. ‘It’s some of your family from Bilbao – we’re on our way to the hospital …’ Without a word, Manuel pushed impatiently past him, and was dumbfounded by the scene before him, though everything seemed rather dark after being in sunlight.

  A woman was lying on Grandma Micaela’s old sofa, and by her knelt a man. On the hearth rug stood a tiny, filthy toddler with black curly hair, screaming hard. As Manuel entered, the child lost his unsteady balance and flopped to the ground, looked around him, and heightened his screams. By the table, stood Maria in her dressing-gown, her hair tumbled from sleep, tearing up a white pillowslip, as if her life depended upon it.

  Thoroughly scared, Manuel exclaimed, ‘Christ! What’s happening?’

  The kneeling man looked up. Out of a face blackened with dirt, a pair of tortured, blood-shot eyes stared at him. Manuel did not know him and turned, in bewilderment, to his sister.

  She was quickly folding the white cloth into a pad, and she said in a frantic tone, ‘Thank God you’ve come, Mannie!’ She gestured towards the sofa. ‘Quanito and Carmela have escaped from Bilbao. They’ve brought little Ramon to us, while they take Carmela up to the Royal. She’s in such pain that I’m just making a quick bandage to put over her face before they go.’

  Manuel turned to the settee. His eyes had adjusted to the shadows of the room, and he could hardly believe what he saw. One side of the woman’s face did not look like a face at all.

  All the flesh seemed to have been ripped away, to expose a glimpse of bone or teeth. Though blood had clotted in some places, in others there was a soggy, yellow mass. The forehead, the chin and the neck were red and very swollen. Whether the eye was there or not, he was not sure; the swelling was too great. She seemed hardly conscious, though she was moaning.

  He looked again at the man. ‘Quanito?’

  The man nodded. He seemed ready to collapse, too.

  Maria impatiently pushed the men back. ‘Give me space,’ she ordered. She leaned over Carmela and said softly, ‘I’m going to sponge the good side of your face. Then I’m going to put a pad over the wound; it’s wetted with salted water. I’ll put my summer scarf round it to hold it, until you get to the hospital.’ She spoke in Basque.

  The woman fought her weakly, but Quanito held her hands and whispered comfortingly to her.

  Not knowing what to do, Manuel turned to the toddler, who had ceased to scream and was now sobbing hopelessly. He picked the child up and was promptly kicked for his pains. He persisted, however, and held the child close to his shoulder while he tried to hush him.

  The patient young customs officer, who had edged into the crowded room, said to Manuel, ‘We could not get the lady to relinquish the child. She insisted on coming into the house with it, though I doubt she really knows what she’s doing. Otherwise, I would have had her in hospital by now. I had a real shock, when I saw her, poor thing.’

  Manuel nodded. While Maria murmured to Carmela and Quanito, he inquired of the officer, ‘How did they come?’

  The man replied, ‘In a fishing smack – we’ve had a few like that. There were seven of them in the boat. They landed not more’n an hour ago.’ He glanced across at the tableau by the sofa, and said softly, ‘The medical officer took one look at the lady, and asked for a car to take her to hospital immediately. I was just going off duty, so I got the job.’

  ‘It’s very good of you,’ Manuel responded, as he patted the back of the sobbing child.

  Her face a mask of anxiety, Maria stepped back, and Quanito asked Manuel brusquely, ‘Help me lift her back into the car.’ He did not know who Manuel was, but supposed him to be family.

  ‘Of course.’ Manuel turned and bundled the little boy into Maria’s arms. He told her that he would go up to the hospital with Quanito, and once Carmela had been seen by the doctors, he would find a public telephone and phone Rosita at Sloan’s, and ask her to come home.

  Maria clasped the child to her and commenced to rock him gently, though she looked very distraught. Manuel could see that she was trembling.

  ‘Mam’ll come quick, I’m sure,’ he said.

  He and Quanito eased Carmela into Grandfather Juan’s old carving chair, which had arms to it. By this means, they carried the wounded woman to the edge of the pavement with a minimum of handling her. The customs officer held the car door open while they eased her inside. She felt very hot and she moaned as they moved her. Quanito crawled in with her, to hold her upright, and Manuel got in beside the driver.

  The worried young customs officer took off like a racing speedboat, his hand on the horn. He used the horn every time he approached a white-coated policeman at a corner, directing traffic, and the constable, seeing the uniform and sensing a crisis, stopped the traffic so that they could pass over the intersection. Much to the ire of a porter, who seemed to think they should have parked elsewhere and walked into the hospital, they followed an ambulance and drew in behind it.

  The man was more civil, however, when the customs officer climbed quickly out. Here was Authority. A stretcher was sent for, while the officer ran inside, to capture a nurse and explain that the Port Medical Authority had sent them an emergency case.

  Thanks to the customs officer’s efforts, Carmela was carried straight in, to be seen by a doctor and then admitted.

  Quanito was not allowed to accompany her. Nearly beside himself, he was sent with Manuel to wait in a crowded waiting room. The customs officer inquired if they would be able to get home again all right, and when Manuel said they could go by tram, he said goodbye. Both Quanito and Manuel thanked him profusely for his help.

  The numbers in the waiting room slowly decl
ined as the evening approached. Finally, when they were the only two left, a passing nursing sister stopped to ask what they were doing there.

  Manuel stood up and explained that they were waiting for news of Quanito’s wife. A perplexed Quanito glowered beside him; he spoke no English, but he sensed that the sister did not approve of them. It was not surprising; Quanito was still wearing the clothes in which he had tried to rescue his family from under the ruins of their home. Covered with dust, he had then got wetted down with spray while in the fishing boat. With little water in Bilbao, he had not had a wash for a week and smelled very badly.

  ‘You’d better return in the morning,’ the nurse said coldly.

  Manuel’s lips tightened. He drew himself up to his full height, and said belligerently, ‘My cousin has just come from Spain – Bilbao. He has lost almost his entire family in the air raids, and his wife is terribly wounded. They have been through hell. Hell, do you understand! Please tell me where I can inquire.’

  A nursing sister was not used to such speech from the lower classes, and she flushed with anger. Then she asked suddenly, ‘Bilbao? Spain? How extraordinary! What’s her name?’

  ‘Mrs Carmela Barinèta – from Bilbao.’

  She looked again at Quanito, and then said, ‘Wait here. I’ll inquire.’

  She swept away in a rustle of starch, and they sat down to wait again. Quanito leaned back against the wall behind the wooden bench on which they were sitting. ‘I wish I’d thought to ask Maria for a glass of water. After so many days of little to drink, I’m dried out.’

  ‘I’ll ask for you,’ Manuel said, and he got up and went to a desk at the other end of the big room, where a young woman was writing busily.

  ‘Could I have a glass of water?’ he asked.

  She glanced up impatiently, and then across the room at Quanito. ‘I’m not here to run around getting glasses of water,’ she told him. ‘You should think of these things before you come.’

  Furious, Manuel made an obscene gesture at her, which, mercifully, she did not appear to notice. He walked all round the edge of the room, in the hope of finding a lavatory, where he could get water. If there was one, it was well hidden.

  He returned angrily to Quanito. ‘No luck,’ he said. ‘Blast them.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Quanito replied, and closed his eyes.

  Until that moment, Manuel had forgotten to telephone his mother. He looked at his watch, and realized that Rosita would now have arrived home. He had been so anxious to support Quanito and Carmela that he had forgotten Maria and the baby. To help the time of their waiting pass, he had inquired what exactly had happened in Bilbao, and was horrified by the reply.

  ‘All the family in Bilbao is dead, except us,’ Quanito had hoarsely whispered to him. ‘It’s sheer luck that we’re still here. You see, everybody thought that Bilbao could hold out indefinitely against Franco’s armies – we’d wear him down and break out and take the countryside back again. But we hadn’t counted on the Germans helping him.’

  ‘Germans?’

  ‘Sure. It was the German Luftwaffe that bombed the hell out of us, not to speak of being shelled by German guns. Other towns had fallen. But they weren’t fortified like Bilbao is. We couldn’t shoot planes down with the guns we had, though. So they swept down on us and dropped bombs wherever they fancied – and machine-gunned the streets.’ He stopped for a moment, as if hit by acute pain. Then he went on with an effort. ‘We’ve held out for nearly six weeks – but, I tell you, the city can’t take much more.’

  He again stopped, and Manuel thought he was going to cry. But instead he sighed and turned to face Manuel. He said brokenly, ‘Father and mother – your aunt and Uncle Agustin – and my younger brother; Great-uncle Barinèta and our two cousins – three old people – all of them died in the ruins made by one bomb. I couldn’t believe the wreckage when I saw it. We lived in the next street, and when I heard the crash, I ran through the raid to see if they were all right. The neighbours came, and we all worked like demons trying to get them out. Then the broken wall of a warehouse at the back of them teetered. We ran for it – and down it came. And that was that.’ He looked down at his torn, filthy clothing. ‘I’ve never had a chance to change my clothes since it happened.’

  Manuel shivered. ‘My God!’ he muttered.

  Quanito cleared his throat. ‘That’s not all of it. You know I had two other boys older than Ramon?’

  Manuel did not know. He said apprehensively, ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes. When the raid seemed over, they wanted to play in our street – they were tired of hours of being in the cellar. So the wife let them out to play by the doorstep.’

  ‘Not them, too?’ Manuel whispered in horror.

  ‘Yes. Out of nowhere, a plane suddenly dived, and machine-gunned the street. Took my boys and two of a neighbour’s. We buried them together in an old churchyard nearby – it was the only place we could dig in. My lads were only three – twins. Then, on the way back to our house, they began to shell us.’

  ‘Was that how Carmela got hurt?’

  He nodded. ‘We started to run for home, and a piece of shrapnel hit her. Took that whole chunk out of the side of her face. I got her home – but she was in agony. So we laid her in the cellar, and the other couple stayed with her and Ramon. I ran like mad for the nearest doctor – and his house was flat! I was nearly out of my mind. I thought, I’ll never be able to get her to a hospital, with all hell let loose – and she so badly hurt.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I went back home. And then the idea came to me, to try to get down the river and over to England – to you people – because we lived right by the river – in the Old Town.

  ‘As soon as it was quiet again, my friend and I put what food and water we had into my boat. We brought two lodgers living with my neighbours with us. Between us, we bandaged Carmela and carried her down. And we came out by night – without lights, though a lot of fires tended to light up the water. I began to think we’d never make it.’

  ‘It must have been terrifying.’

  ‘It was – especially for Carmela, particularly when her mouth swelled up. She couldn’t even bear to cry.’

  Manuel shivered. These things didn’t happen to you or your family, did they? The newspapers didn’t tell you about people like Quanito; so you imagined that they must be managing through the reported battles. He said nervously, ‘Mother wrote to Uncle Agustin – your father – a couple of months ago suggesting he should bring the family to Liverpool.’

  ‘I know – but we didn’t seriously think that Bilbao would fall. It’s a fortress of a place – but we didn’t count on German bombers and long-range cannon.’

  In the bleak hospital waiting room, the two men had almost given up hope of hearing anything about Carmela. Even the supercilious woman at the desk on the far side of the room had departed, turning out most of the lights. Then the door opened and the nursing sister hurried across the empty room. She was wearing her cloak, as if ready to go home.

  She said quickly to them, ‘Mrs er – Barin – what is it? Your wife has been put under sedation and is comfortable. You may come in tomorrow to see how she is.’

  Quanito watched the faces of the other two, and saw from Manuel’s expression that all was not well. His face darkened under its coat of dirt, and he asked anxiously for a translation, as the nurse began to move away. Afraid Quanito might make a fuss, Manuel hastily thanked the sister and told Quanito that the nurse had done her best. As they moved out of the hospital after her, he gave a fuller translation, and Quanito shook his clenched fist at the black stone frontage of the hospital. ‘She’s my wife,’ he hissed at Manuel. ‘Surely I can see her?’

  Manuel did his best to comfort the man. He said, ‘She’ll be sound asleep under sedation, and the doctor will probably have her in surgery, as soon as she’s a bit rested.’

  Quanito bowed his head and accepted what he did not seem to have the power to change, and Manuel
took him home by tram. The few passengers stared at such a wreck of a man accompanied by a young man decently clad in a tweed jacket and grey trousers.

  At home, a startled Rosita had been faced with Maria standing in the doorway, looking for her, while she rocked a grubby, dozing child in her arms.

  ‘Good gracious, luv! Who’ve you got there?’ Rosita exclaimed, as Maria turned back into the hall so that she could enter.

  Maria babbled out the story of the day, while a work-weary Rosita took off her hat and coat and hung them up. Then she peeped at the tear-stained little face against Maria’s breast, and exclaimed, ‘Poor little lamb. Maybe he’d sleep for a while, if we put him on the sofa and wrap a shawl round him. Which one of theirs is this? Ramon?’

  ‘Yes. The baby.’

  ‘Where are the other two?’

  ‘They’re gone, too, Mam.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ Rosita pulled out a chair and sat down suddenly, as Maria carefully laid Ramon on the sofa, and shook out a shawl which normally lay folded on the back of it. As she tucked the shawl round the child, he stirred, put his thumb in his mouth and then seemed to drop off to sleep.

  ‘Agustin?’ inquired Rosita shakily, as Maria turned to face her.

  ‘Dead. He was home from sea, and one bomb took him and his family, and Great-Uncle and his family next door but one.’

  Maria had held up very well until then. But now she began to cry, while her mother reeled visibly under the blow of her news. ‘Don’t cry, luv,’ she said to her daughter in a pitifully small voice. ‘We’ve got to be the brave ones, and help them.’ Inside, she wished frantically for Bridget, to help her bear the grief.

  ‘Holy Mary. Give me strength!’ she prayed. She made herself get up and put the kettle on the gas stove, which she lit with a match. Then she went to her daughter, and held her and crooned to her, just as Micaela had done for her in years past. ‘Frannie’ll be home soon, and she’ll help us,’ she comforted the younger daughter. ‘We’re going to have a good strong cup of tea, and then you go back to bed for a while. I’m going to make a big supper. I bet Quanito hasn’t had much to eat these past few days – and he’s got to keep his strength up. Thank goodness, I’ve plenty of fish in.’ Then she added brokenly, ‘Poor Carmela! Poor woman!’