The Liverpool Basque
Page 35
He could not locate a single familiar landmark, except that at the side of a narrow road leading off Hurst Street to his right, a rusty street sign, hanging by a single bolt on a block of stone, declared Sparling Street. Other than that, there was nothing but rubble, which had been used to fill up the cellars of the demolished buildings. It was like the scene of an air raid, a tumbled sweep of brick, stone and concrete, through which a few blades of grass and dandelion leaves announced that, one day, nature would repair the damage.
His head bent towards the gusty wind, he slowly walked round the tiny Baltic Fleet, which stood alone beside the huge highway along which the taxi had brought him. He wanted to see what lay across the roaring river of traffic.
Where once had been the Salthouse Dock, there was a car park, and beyond it he could see the familiar bulk of the Albert Dock Warehouse. The great walls that had protected the docks had gone. Slightly to his left should have been the Wapping Basin. If it were still there, he could not see it through eyes blurred with tears.
Since he was early for his appointment with Arnador, he walked slowly back along Hurst Street and up and down the traces of the tiny side streets.
After carefully pacing distances, he saw what he had been looking for; two steps leading from the narrow pavement up into the rubble – and, a foot or two away, two more steps.
He stood looking down at them, feeling dizzily confused and very tired. After a few moments of hesitation, he squatted down on one of the steps, and rested his arms on his knees. Then he put his head down and cried, cried on his mother’s doorstep, and cried again because the next doorstep was that of Bridget, who had comforted them all.
Not a soul passed him, not a vehicle went up and down the narrow lanes which had been his childhood playground; the Baltic Fleet was locked in pre-lunchtime calm.
After a while, he took off his spectacles and wiped his eyes with a paper handkerchief, and then cleaned his glasses before putting them back on. He stared down at the street where he and Joey Connolly, Brian Wing and Andy Pilar had played at marbles or flicking ciggie cards, or, later with Arnador, had played cricket with a couple of beer bottles as stumps, much to the alarm of various beshawled housewives, who had visions of the ball going through their windows.
Except for the traffic roaring along the busy new road, which once had been the dock road, there was no noise, no thudding machinery, no horses’ hooves, no clanging bell of the railway train that used to run along the other side of the street under the overhead railway – no overhead railway, either.
Old Manuel picked up from the side of the step on which he sat two tiny shattered pieces of brick. He looked at them in the palm of his hand, and then slowly slipped them into his pocket. Nothing left, he thought, except the memories in my head – and in Arnie’s head.
He was thankful to see signs of life in the Baltic Fleet; a curtain was flicked straight; the door was set ajar. A taxi drew up and discharged Arnador, who, as the taxi left, went towards the restaurant’s entrance. Then, spotting Manuel struggling to get up from his doorstep, he grinned and waved.
Manuel was truly glad to see him, but found it difficult to hurry amid the ghosts which swarmed around him.
They had an excellent lunch with a good wine, and Arnie listened attentively to Manuel’s expression of shock at what he had seen. Arnador had taken one glance at the carnage wrought by time and city planning, and said he really did not want to walk around it.
They sat smoking for a while over a brandy each, Manuel still looking a little disconsolate. Anxious to cheer up his friend, Arnador suggested that before making their proposed visit to the travel agent, they should go across to the new Albert Dock complex to look at the Maritime Museum.
The brandy and the suggestion had their effect. ‘All right. Let’s go,’ agreed Manuel. He was determined not to further spoil his time with Arnador by being depressed. He got up quickly and the room whirled around him. He shouldn’t have taken the brandy, he decided ruefully. It took more time than you would think for rum to work its way out of your system, never mind downing brandy so soon after it. He unsteadily beckoned for the bill, and insisted that it was his turn to pay.
As they stood in the entrance, they both carefully put on their berets, last reminders of a once vibrant Basque community for whom the Baltic Fleet had been the great meeting place.
Teetering on the edge of the pavement, they viewed cautiously the fast-moving traffic, which lay between them and the Museum. Then, picking what seemed to be a quiet moment, they began carefully to cross the wide road, lane by lane.
‘I never saw neither of them, I didn’t,’ cried an almost incoherent driver of a huge lorry laden with containers for Seaforth Dock. ‘They was masked by another lorry,’ he wailed, to a shaken young police constable not yet enured to the results of traffic accidents.
As the constable jotted down notes in his notebook, and another constable waved slowing traffic onwards, the driver tried not to look at the ambulance crew gently wrapping up the remains of a lifelong friendship.
He saw instead, two berets blown by the wind, scampering over the ruins at the side of the road, to come to rest on what must have been a doorstep. The wind whined, and it seemed, for a moment, to be the sound of the high-pitched laughter of old men enjoying a joke.
The frightened man shivered; the place felt haunted.
Selective Bibliography
Ancona, George, Freighters (Thomas Y. Crowell, New York, 1985).
Behrens, C. B. A., History of the Second World War. Merchant Shipping and the Demands of War (HMSO and Longman Green, London, 1955).
Carr, Raymond, Modern Spain (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980).
Collins, Roger, The Basques (Basil Blackwell Ltd, Oxford, 1986).
Forester, C. S., Brown on Resolution (Pan Books, London, 1963).
Keefe, Eugene K., Area Handbook for Spain (The American University, Washington, DC, 1976).
Lane, Tony, Grey Dawn Breaking (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1986).
Lane, Tony, Liverpool: Gateway of Empire (Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1987).
Laxalt, Robert, In a Hundred Graves (University of Nevada Press, Reno, Nevada, 1972).
Laxalt, Robert, Sweet Promised Land (University of Nevada Press, Reno, Nevada, 1986).
Legarreta, Dorothy, The Guernica Generation (University of Nevada Press, Reno, Nevada, 1984).
Middlebrook, Martin, Convoy (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1978).
O’Connor, Fred, Liverpool: It All Came Tumbling Down (Brunswick Printing and Publishing Co. Ltd, Liverpool, 1986).
Robinson, A. R. B., Chaplain on the Mersey, 1859–67 (A. R. B. Robinson, York, 1987).
Scott, Dixon, Liverpool (Adam and Charles Black, London, 1907).
Spanish State Tourist Department, Spain (Spanish State Tourist Department, Madrid, date unknown).
Taylor, J. E., Of Ships and Seamen (Williams and Norgate Ltd, London, 1949).
Unwin, Frank, Reflections on the Mersey (Gallery Press, Neston, 1984).
Waters, John M., Jr., Bloody Winter (D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc, New York, 1967).
Whittington-Egan, Richard, Liverpool: This Is My City (Gallery Press, Liverpool, 1972).
About the Author
THE LIVERPOOL BASQUE
Helen Forrester was born in Hoylake, Cheshire, the eldest of seven children. For many years, until she married, her home was Liverpool – a city that features prominently in her work. For the past forty years she has lived in Alberta, Canada.
Helen Forrester is the author of four best-selling volumes of autobiography and a number of equally successful novels, the latest of which is Madame Barbara. In 1988 she was awarded an honorary D.Litt by the University of Liverpool in recognition of her achievements as an author. The University of Alberta conferred on her the same honour in 1993.
Author’s Note
This is a novel and its characters are products of my imagination, its situations likewise. Whatever similarity there m
ay be of name, no reference is intended to any person living or dead. The loss of the ship, the Esperanza Larrinaga, in 1920, is part of the history of Liverpool, and I have allowed one of the characters I have created to die in it.
Other Works
By Helen Forrester
Fiction
THURSDAY’S CHILD
THE LATCHKEY KID
LIVERPOOL DAISY
THREE WOMEN OF LIVERPOOL
THE MONEYLENDERS OF SHAHPUR
YES, MAMA
THE LEMON TREE
THE LIVERPOOL BASQUE
MOURNING DOVES
MADAME BARBARA
Non-fiction
TWOPENCE TO CROSS THE MERSEY
LIVERPOOL MISS
BY THE WATERS OF LIVERPOOL
LIME STREET AT TWO
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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This paperback edition 1994
First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollinsPublishers 1993
Copyright © Helen Forrester 1993
The Author asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
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