The Liverpool Basque

by Helen Forrester

  Maria continued to cry for a little while and to hold on to her mother. ‘Come on, my dove. You have to go to work at midnight,’ Rosita said. She mopped the girl’s eyes with her hanky, and then inquired, ‘Has little Ramon had anything to eat?’

  ‘I got a cup of hot milk into him – but that’s all.’

  As her mother made tea and then poured it, Maria sat down and, speaking softly so as not to wake Ramon, she expanded on the tragedy which had struck their extended family. She said, ‘Quanito was so thankful for the kindness which they received, once they came over the bar and were spotted. There’ve been other small boats coming in and the pilots were watching for them, when they went out to other ships. They brought mostly kids with one or two priests looking after them. They’ve been sending them to Basque camps. I suppose that’s what they’ll do with the neighbours who came with Quanito.’

  Rosita took a big gulp of tea. She gestured towards the sofa, and replied firmly, ‘Well, that little chap’s never going to a camp. He stays right here in this house – and so do Quanito and Carmela, until they want to go home.’

  Maria smiled faintly at the intensity of feeling in her mother’s voice. She could guess that Rosita was already working out how to squeeze three more people into the little house. Comforted that her mother was now in command and that Francesca would be home soon, she finished her tea and agreed to go back to bed.

  When Francesca returned from work, Rosita told her of the tragedy, and she immediately set to to help her mother make the evening meal. In the middle of this, Arnador arrived on his bike, which he parked in their back yard. He knocked at the back door and entered without waiting for a response.

  Expecting to pick up Manuel and walk down to the Playhouse, he was very shaken to hear their dreadful news.

  He sat for a few minutes with Rosita, while Francesca continued to peel a pile of potatoes, and expressed his sympathy at such a tragedy. Then he said he thought he should get out of their way. ‘I think I’ll go back home to tell Mum and Dad and Josefa – I know they will feel a deep sorrow for you. I’ll drop by tomorrow evening to inquire how Carmela is.’

  Very soberly, he let himself out of the back door and wheeled his bike through the yard entrance.

  Rosita returned to cutting up fish and breading it. ‘He’s such a nice lad,’ she said. Francesca nodded. Within herself, she was sick with horror, and she would have been glad if sensible, reliable Arnador had stayed a little longer.

  When Manuel and Quanito returned about eight o’clock, Francesca was whipping mashed potatoes, and Rosita had a pot of hot fat on the back of the stove waiting to receive the fish. Bread, cheese and a bowl of Australian apples graced the table; a bowl of tinned peas was keeping hot in the oven.

  Rosita did not know what to say, as the apparition which was Quanito entered her living-room. Was that dried blood on his jersey? She opened her arms, and he went into them like a child who had been lost. He said, ‘I’m so tired.’

  She held him, while dry sobs shook him. Then she said gently, as she led him to a chair, ‘Sit down here a minute. I’m going to give you a big glass of decent Basque wine, to set you up a bit. Then Manuel’ll take a bowl of hot water upstairs for you, and you can wash yourself, and take those clothes off.’ She turned to Manuel. ‘Mannie, you go and get out a pair of your pyjamas for him and your dressing-gown.’

  Without bothering Quanito with a single question, she soon had the family round the table. She herself held a whimpering Ramon. She made a joke of feeding him with well-mashed spoonfuls from her plate, and, after a moment’s hesitation, he seemed to accept her soft, Basque voice, and ate. When she saw that he had a fair number of teeth, she gave him a piece of fried fish in his fist to feed himself. She pressed more wine on his father, and Manuel, remembering his thirst in the hospital, brought a jug of water to him.

  After Manuel had taken Quanito upstairs, to sleep in Uncle Leo’s bed, Rosita asked Frannie to get a bowl of water and put it on the table, and she tackled the job of cleaning up Ramon, who was in a disgusting state. She washed the little boy while holding him on her lap. She had no children’s clothes to put on him, so a towel was torn in half to make two clean nappies and then she wrapped him in the shawl from the sofa. As she worked, she played with the child, and finally made him gurgle and smile.

  Together her daughters stripped her bed, to put an old oilcloth tablecloth under the bottom sheet, to preserve the mattress from Ramon, who was, as yet, far from watertight. For several nights, he shared Rosita’s bed, until the second-hand shop in nearby Granby Street was able to provide a small truckle bed for him.

  When Ramon had been topped up with as much hot milk as he would accept, he was laid in the bed, still in the shawl, and Rosita lay by him until he slept. Then she went downstairs again. She was immensely tired herself, but she had, somehow, to plan for the next day. She had no time to grieve.

  Downstairs, she found Manuel describing the details of the family in Bilbao to the two young women huddled on the sofa together. The only relation whom the girls had seen before was Uncle Agustin. They knew he had a wife and sons, and that one of his sons was married and had children. But, except for Francesca’s visit as an infant, neither girl had been to Bilbao, so they were not well acquainted with their cousins. Manuel told them, ‘Quanito knew our names, though when he first saw me he did not know, for certain, who I was!’

  ‘What are we going to do, Mam?’ Francesca asked. ‘I can’t believe what happened to them – it’s too awful to face.’

  ‘It happened,’ Rosita assured her. ‘And Carmela is obviously very sick.’ She examined her needlepricked left hand, and heaved a great sigh. ‘Well, as I said, they’ll stay with us for now. Just how I cope with tomorrow, I’m not sure.’

  Her children stared at her. They understood the complication of having a small boy to care for, when all of them went to work – or, in Manuel’s case, to college; and Quanito would, tomorrow, want to go immediately to the hospital to see his wife.

  After an uneasy silent pause, Manuel said, ‘I could miss my morning lectures – I could get a pal to give me his notes to copy – so J could take Quanito up to the hospital. He doesn’t know the city – and it’s two trams.’

  Rosita flexed her aching fingers, and said to Manuel, ‘If you and Quanito could watch Ramon first thing tomorrow, I’ll run down to the phone box and phone Sloan’s. Thank goodness, Miss Hamilton doesn’t retire until next year. I can tell her what’s happened, and say I’ll be in on Monday. It’s Friday tomorrow, so I’ll only lose a day and a half. It’ll give me a chance to talk to Quanito and, maybe, get up to the hospital to see Carmela.’

  Maria spoke up. ‘If I can get a few hours’ sleep when I come off shift tomorrow morning, I can watch Ramon, so you could get up to the hospital in the afternoon. Then Mannie can get to his afternoon lectures.’

  The coming of Ramon had already begun to alter their lives. In her heart, Rosita feared the little lad would soon be motherless, and she knew that, at a stage in her life when she needed the most peace because her menopause was upon her, she was going to have to bring him up. She had no idea how she was going to do it.

  Chapter Forty-four

  There were no sulpha drugs in those days to save Carmela from a dreadful death, thought Old Manuel sadly. By the time she had medical attention, she was in a shocking state. Twenty-four hours after her arrival in Liverpool, she died of septicaemia.

  Because Quanito was penniless, her funeral expenses were paid from Rosita’s and Leo’s bank account. Later, proud Quanito’s fishing smack was auctioned to pay the dues incurred by its presence in the Mersey river. He insisted upon giving Rosita the balance of the money raised by the auction, in part payment of the funeral costs.

  Immediately after his wife’s death, he nearly went mad. For hour after hour he raved of vengeance, vengeance on Franco and his Spaniards and on his German allies. He swore by Almighty God that he would make them pay for the death of Carmela and their beaut
iful sons and for his entire family. Again and again, he swore it aloud.

  On that awful evening, Manuel and Arnador finally made him so drunk that he did not come round for thirty-six hours. When he did regain his senses, he was deadly quiet. He sat with a fretful Ramon on his knee, frozen with grief.

  Rosita, almost constantly in tears herself, fluttered round him, trying to comfort him with food and with tender promises to be a mother to his small boy – though God only knows how, she thought to herself. There was room in her small home to house both father and child, if the British would allow them to stay in Liverpool, she assured him.

  As refugees, Quanito and Ramon were reluctantly allowed to stay temporarily in Liverpool; and, when Manuel, Leo and Quanito happened to be in port at the same time, the back bedroom was rather crowded. Ramon was comforted by his truckle bed being pushed close to Rosita’s, and he was spoiled to death by Francesca and Maria, as well as Rosita. He thrived on it.

  Until the Spanish War was over, Quanito found a berth with a small Basque shipping company sailing out of Liverpool to the West Indies. After the vicious conflict was ended early in 1939, Quanito applied for British citizenship; but he had not been in the country sufficiently long to be considered for it. He was, however, given permission to reside with his son in Liverpool. He thankfully accepted this.

  When travel was possible, he went back to Bilbao to see if his home still stood. He left Ramon with Rosita, and crossed the English Channel by ferry and went by train to his home city.

  Rosita received a postcard to say that he had been to see his old home, but it had been pulled down as unsafe and was now a heap of rubble surrounded by a temporary fence.

  After that, he vanished and Rosita never heard directly from him again.

  From time to time, a shy Basque seaman, carrying a verbal message, would arrive on the Echaniz doorstep. He was always invited in, fed and plied with wine. Then the news was whispered to them.

  Quanito was up in the mountains with the Basque Separatists, who were fighting for a country of their own. They had blown up the car of a Spanish general – with the general inside it. They constantly harried Spanish businessmen until, in fear of their lives, they left Basque cities. They picked off informers and any Spaniard unlucky enough to come within the sights of their guns. They had had to bury some of their own men and some were in prison – but not Quanito, who, though very daring, was also very smart, the seamen said.

  Rosita wrung her hands. ‘When are they going to stop?’ she asked an older man, who was one of the messengers.

  ‘When we have a country of our own,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘When we’ve seen their cities burn, as ours did. Who’s going to accept Spanish rule, after all we’ve been through? We’ll never give up.’

  Each night visitor brought a small sum of money for the maintenance of Ramon. Rosita accepted it and banked it for the child; none of the family inquired from what source Quanito had acquired it. Rosita asked Manuel or Leo to change the foreign currency, since seamen often had such money to change, and the transaction would not cause so much comment as it might have done if a woman undertook it.

  Even after the commencement of the Second World War, Quanito did not forget them, and money continued to arrive. Rosita took to writing anonymous small notes to her nephew, saying that Ramon was thriving. She asked the messengers to pass them on, if they had the opportunity. She never knew whether Quanito received them.

  Encouraged and cosseted by three women and two men, the boy knew little about his parentage until he was about ten. In the meantime, he was simply told that they had died in the Spanish War. As far as he was concerned, Rosita was his mother and Uncle Leo was cast as father. Manuel was the big brother who played endlessly with him, when he was home, and brought him presents from foreign places.

  Ramon’s lack of a birth certificate worried both Leo and Rosita. They tried to adopt him, since he was their grand-nephew; his mother was dead and his father, they told the authorities, had deserted him.

  They were immediately caught in floundering red tape. First, the Spanish Government and the Spanish Roman Catholic Church were anxious for all refugees to return to Spain, and Ramon and his father were refugees; the fascists felt it was insulting that many Basques did not wish to return to live under their oppressive regime. Second, the would-be parents were brother and sister, not husband and wife – it was, therefore, an unstable home declared the British, and, even if the child was an orphan, it was not wise to place him in it.

  Patient Leo said angrily to Manuel, one day, that he wanted to scream at the woman dealing with the case. When he heard this, Arnador gave them the name of a good solicitor. Quite a lot of their precious savings were expended on his fees.

  It took time, but the solicitor proved his worth. Ramon got official permission to reside permanently in the country and to apply for citizenship when he was aged twenty-one. Meanwhile, Rosita and Leo were declared his official guardians. It was not what his elders had wanted – but it worked.

  Perhaps it was as well that Ramon’s situation had been formalized, because eighteen months after the Second World War broke out his wrathful father became internationally famous. Still an ardent Separatist, he travelled secretly to Madrid, and neatly shot dead two German diplomats visiting their fascist allies. It was the first of a number of German assassinations carried out by an unidentified crack shot, believed to be a Basque, until, in Argentina, he missed his target and, unintentionally, killed an eminent Argentinian. Cornered on a roof top by the Buenos Aires police, he must have decided that this was the end, because, rather than be captured, he shot himself.

  Long in their graves, his father and mother, his extended family, and his beloved Carmela and their sons had been methodically revenged. Few Basques grudged him such a reprisal.

  Chapter Forty-five

  It was obvious to Rosita that she could no longer work full-time at Sloan’s, now that she had Ramon to care for, so she begged an interview with her old mentor, Miss Muriel Hamilton, and explained the situation to her.

  ‘I need to work,’ she explained, ‘and I love working for Sloan’s. But now I’ve got young Ramon …’

  Rosita’s exquisite work with a needle was more precious to her employer than she imagined. Younger women coming into the trade were not nearly as well versed as their mothers had been. Miss Hamilton hummed and hawed, and agreed to provide work for her at home. Rosita would not earn nearly as much, but, added to what the rest of the family was bringing in, she knew she could manage.

  Neither Miss Hamilton nor Rosita foresaw the havoc that would be wrought in the women’s clothing industry by the war, hovering on the horizon, and the consequent rationing.

  Because she was at home more, Rosita began to notice that Maria was being courted by Madeleine Saitua’s younger son, Vicente, and she was very upset about it.

  ‘You’re too young for him,’ she stormed at her daughter, one night after Ramon had been put to bed. ‘He must be at least fourteen years older than you are. Do you want to be a widow for half your life?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Mam. I’m nearly twenty-three. I know what I want.’ Maria fought back stubbornly. ‘He’s always been in work – being a carpenter, he can work ashore or in a ship. What’s the matter with him?’

  There was nothing the matter with him, except that he was thirty-seven years old; and Rosita knew it. She had known him for most of his life, and Madeleine Saitua, now a widow, would be a kindly mother-in-law. Sulkily, she returned to a collar she had been embroidering for Sloan’s.

  Boiling with rage – and yet made fearful by her mother’s remarks about widowhood – Maria went out to meet her beloved and go to the cinema, before going on nightshift.

  Later on, when Francesca returned from a meeting of an amateur dramatic club to which she belonged, she found her mother sitting dejectedly in Grandma Micaela’s rocking chair, the Liverpool Echo unopened in her lap.

  Aware of how tiring Rosita was finding the c
are of Ramon, she inquired a little anxiously, ‘Are you feeling poorly, Mam?’ She sat down on a straight chair facing her mother. Rosita thought she had never seen her look more beautiful.

  The older woman sighed, and told her about Maria and Vicente.

  Francesca laughed. ‘They’ve been going together for over a year now. Didn’t you know?’

  Rosita made a face. ‘I suppose I didn’t notice him amongst all her other hangers-on!’ She sounded tart.

  ‘Come on, Mam. Vicente’s as nice a fellow as you can imagine. He’ll treat her like a princess. Isn’t that better than being misused by a younger, more thoughtless chap?’

  ‘She says she wants to be engaged. He’s asked her.’

  ‘Tush, Mam. Let them be. We don’t know what lies ahead of us. It’s better for her to be happy now.’ She took the hat pins out of her hat and laid them on the table, while she removed her hat carefully from her head. ‘Be agreeable to their getting engaged – and see what happens. It may not last.’

  ‘But, Frannie, when she’s forty-five, he’ll be fifty-nine and close to the end of his life.’

  ‘That could leave them over twenty years of contented married life!’

  Rosita frowned, and then laughed suddenly. ‘You’re wicked girls – you always defend each other! And what about you, young lady? When are you going to get yourself married?’

  ‘When a nice Basque asks me,’ replied her daughter cheerfully. ‘Maria and I are agreed – we both want Basques for husbands – Grandpa and Daddy were such golden examples, that neither of us can consider anybody less!’