The Liverpool Basque Read online

  Her husband responded bitterly, ‘Priests think any kind of birth control is wrong. Fat lot of practice they get – they’d change their minds if they had a horde of kids – I know what you’re getting at.’

  ‘Couldn’t we do like Mary’s hubbie?’ Her eyes were imploring now. She badly wanted to please Pedro, to enjoy herself.

  He whistled to himself, and the candle danced in the small movement of the air, as he silently considered wife versus church. What did he really believe himself, amid the welter of teachings handed down by a celibate church hierarchy? He knew he had never, until this moment, questioned their teachings. But one thing he knew from the society around him – it was deadly easy to lose a wife in childbirth. He would, he knew, sell his immortal soul rather than lose his lovely wife, if it could be avoided.

  He nodded, and ran his hand down her thigh. ‘I’ll go shopping,’ he promised. ‘But not a word to anyone, remember. Promise?’

  She smiled her old, seductive smile. ‘I promise,’ she said. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she asked, ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, as he pulled her close. ‘I won’t go in. And I’ll try to make it good for you.’

  Before he sailed again, there was a lot of earnest conversation between him and his wife and mother about giving Manuel a better education. They spoke volubly in Basque.

  ‘Jean Baptiste wanted his youngest to go to St Francis Xavier’s, but he had a good spell unemployed, and they couldn’t do it. Manuel could be a doctor or a solicitor, if he went on into university,’ Rosita told him.

  ‘University?’ Pedro looked at her incredulously. ‘A kid from Wapping Dock?’ He had had in mind keeping the child in school until he was sixteen.

  ‘Why not?’ demanded Rosita. ‘By the time he gets his Matric, there might be some way he could get there. Madeleine says there are a few scholarships, even now.’

  Pedro was not too sure what a Matric was. While he considered this lofty ambition, he sipped his mug of tea. If you went to university, he knew you could become a doctor or a lawyer and have a good house in West Derby. It seemed like a pipe dream to him. His own father had scraped money to keep him in school until he was fourteen, and had helped him to take time out from going to sea while he studied until he had got his Master’s Certificate; and it had made a world of difference to his life.

  But an economic downturn meant he could be out of work very easily – any seaman would tell you that – and, since his father-in-law’s death, Pedro had done what he could to quietly put away a little in his own private Post Office savings book, to help tide him over such bad times.

  ‘He could go into the Navy – that’s regular. Twenty-one years, you can do.’

  ‘Humph,’ responded Rosita doubtfully. ‘If ever he’s going to be an officer, he must go to grammar school, and he must learn to speak good English. Tell me, where will he learn to do that except in a better school?’

  Pedro was not sure that he wanted a son who was an officer and spoke like one. Wasn’t his own English good enough?

  ‘We speak English,’ he said defensively. ‘And the lad was born in Liverpool – not like me – so he’s eligible to serve in the Navy. He could work his way up a bit – they’d train him.’

  She replied stubbornly, ‘He’s got to speak English – like Father Felipe talks.’

  ‘That bloody Spaniard?’

  ‘Tush!’ interjected Micaela. ‘How can you speak like that? He’s a priest!’

  After the last few nights with his wife, Pedro was feeling resentful of the Church and all its works, and Father Felipe’s exquisite, carefully learned English seemed patronizing to him; even his poor attempts at Basque were annoying, as if he were trying to descend from his lofty position as a Castilian to hob-nob with nobodies. What did a priest know about real life? Pedro wondered, with all the antagonism of a Basque for a Spaniard.

  Poor, overextended Father Felipe would have been sorely hurt, if he had been aware of his parishioner’s lack of esteem. He would, however, have earnestly encouraged young Manuel’s further education. He had already suggested to Micaela that the boy should be given to the Church; and Micaela knew that a child in the Church brought his family instant prestige.

  Micaela now spoke up. ‘He’s the eldest boy – the only boy, up to now. We should try our best for him.’

  Manuel, sitting at the table carefully boring holes in the last of his conkers, preparatory to drying them out on top of the oven, was dreaming of being able to smash Andrew Pilar’s best one, and only half took in the conversation of his elders. He assumed that if he were sent to St Francis Xavier’s, all the other children he knew, like Joey and Brian, would be going, too.

  His elders decided that if they all practised the most rigorous economy, they would manage to send him.

  ‘As well as fees, there’ll be tram fares – and uniform,’ Rosita fretted, suddenly afraid that she was being too ambitious.

  Micaela looked up from her knitting. ‘We’ll manage,’ she assured her daughter serenely. She already saw a purple biretta covering her grandson’s tousled dark hair. God would provide, she was sure.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  In 1916, when, at the age of eight, Manuel entered St Francis Xavier School, he felt very lonely; Joey and Brian showed no signs of being able to follow him. On his first day he feared that he might be the only Basque boy attending because he was the only one in his class. He soon discovered that there was a sprinkling of them in the upper classes, though they were drawn from all over the city. They ignored him because they did not know that he was a Basque – he was just another new pupil, younger than they were.

  Occasionally he heard them speaking to each other in Basque, frequently making derogatory remarks about English boys who had been too rough with them, because they were slightly sallower in complexion than British boys.

  Real fights were rare in the school yard, but one day proud Manuel was called a dago by a nine-year-old Scot. Furious, Manuel struck out with all his force at the scornful, freckled red face of the bigger lad. He became immediately embroiled in a fight with a known bully that he could not win. The other boys formed a circle to egg on the Scot. With his nose already bleeding, it was clear to anyone passing that, despite his best efforts, Manuel was getting the worst of the encounter.

  Held down on the asphalt playground, Manuel took a punch in the eye which made him cry out.

  His cry was followed by a sharp yelp from his antagonist, who received a quick series of kicks in his ribs from a tall, thin youth standing over the pair of them.

  The newcomer scowled at the ring of boys. Then he bent down, got a good grip on the back of the braces of the enraged Scot and hauled him off Manuel. He shook the boy, as he hissed into his badly scratched face, ‘Pick on someone of your own size, you little twerp!’ He shoved the boy away into the crowd.

  Lying on the asphalt, trying to get his breath, a surprised Manuel viewed his rescuer through his unhurt eye. He was even more surprised when the boy said curtly in Basque, ‘Get up.’

  The back of Manuel’s head was throbbing badly where he had hit it when falling backwards. His nose was still dripping and his eye seemed to be swelling. He staggered slowly to his feet, while his rescuer snarled at the retreating boys, ‘Get going you stinking pack of cowards, before I tell on you.’ They reluctantly dispersed, taking the young Scot with them, muttering to each other as they went.

  The Basque boy was several inches taller than Manuel, blond, blue-eyed and pallid-skinned. He looked Manuel up and down, and said again in Basque, ‘Gosh, you do look a mess. Better get cleaned up before a teacher sees you.’ He picked up a blazer lying on the ground. ‘Is this yours?’

  Manuel nodded dumbly, as he steadied himself on his feet. He felt his nose running and wiped it along his shirt sleeve. He was shaken to see a long streak of blood on the white cotton. His mouth began to tremble, and he had a strong desire to cry.

  ‘We’ll go to the cloakroom
,’ said the older boy more kindly. ‘And get you cleaned up. You should have more sense to keep out of fights you can’t win – he’s much heavier than you.’

  Manuel humbly agreed. Then, as they trailed round the edge of the playground, so as not to disturb the various games of football being played with tennis balls, Manuel said furiously, ‘He called me a dago!’

  Pale-blue eyes were turned reflectively upon him, to examine a face which already showed something of the long flat planes of cheek and jaw, an upward curving mouth with full lower lip, which would be his as a man. ‘Well, you’re dark, but you don’t look like a Spaniard,’ the older boy said at length. ‘Did you tell him you were Basque?’

  ‘Na. He probably wouldn’t know what a Basque is,’ responded Manuel scornfully. The blood was beginning to coagulate in his nose, and he badly wanted to blow it. The eye still stung painfully.

  The other boy was grinning. He said, ‘Dad says nobody really knows who we are or where we came from.’

  They reached the cloakroom with its scuffed floor and long lines of black, iron clothes hooks. A tiny washbasin, cracked and grubby, was affixed to the far wall, and next to it hung a roller towel.

  Manuel managed to pull the roller towel far enough to damp it under the solitary tap and then wipe his face with it. Streaks of blood were left on the towel. He damped it again and pressed it against the hurt eye. His nose still oozed slightly so he wiped it again.

  ‘Don’t touch it any more,’ advised the strange boy. ‘It’ll dry up in a minute. Wash the muck off your hands and put on your blazer.’

  Manuel obediently soaped his hands and left a fair amount of greyish foam on the soap tablet and in the sink.

  ‘You’ll pass now. There goes the bell. You’d better hurry!’

  Manuel gulped. He did not want to return to his classroom, but he knew he must. ‘Thanks,’ he said heavily. ‘Thanks for hauling Stewart off me.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ the boy replied, and turned to wander off to his own classroom, as if to belie his own instruction to hurry. When he had gone, Manuel gave his nose a further good wipe on the towel, put on his blazer and fled before he could be chastised for the mess he had made. He slid quickly into his desk, and was, for once, thankful for the fat boy who sat in front of him and partially masked him from the teacher’s icy stare.

  After his mother had washed his face for him and bathed the black eye, clucking her tongue at the damage, and he had had his tea, his grandmother was surprised at the question suddenly fired at her. ‘Granny, what is a Basque?’

  Before answering him, she knitted the two stitches remaining on her left-hand needle. Then she replied with puzzlement, ‘Well, we are Basques, dumpling.’ Although she could barely see him, she sensed that the answer had not sufficed, that he was still in some kind of quandary, so she added, ‘From Bilbao.’

  ‘I know that. But a boy at school – a Basque – said that nobody really knows what a Basque is.’

  Micaela rested her knitting in her lap, while she considered this assertion. Then she said, ‘People have always moved about in the world, so they say that they come from the place their parents settled in. After a while, they become part of that place and its history. Your great-grandfather told me, though, that Basques had always lived in the Pyrenees and had married each other – for thousands and thousands of years, long before people wrote down their history. And nobody was able to shift us from the mountains – not Arabs, not French, not Romans nor Spaniards. We’ve been there since time began, so that even the stories of our beginnings have been lost.’ She was suddenly interested about the boy he had mentioned, and inquired, ‘He was a real Basque?’

  ‘Yes – not from round here, though.’ Manuel had been leaning against the side of her chair, and now he made to get on her lap. She quickly swept her four sharp needles and ball of grey wool on to the floor. The chair wobbled furiously as Manuel settled himself comfortably in the curve of her arm, and she laughed. ‘It’s a long time since you’ve done that,’ she told him. ‘You’re too big to be nursed. What was the boy’s name?’

  He grinned up at her and laid his head on her shoulder. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. Though he was proud to go to St Francis Xavier’s, he had felt very lonely today, with no Joey or Brian to help him in a fight. He needed the comforting warmth of Grandma, who always had time for him. She was always there and always would be. Or would she?

  Micaela felt a faint shudder go through the child’s thin body. ‘What is it, dumpling?’ she asked as she carefully stroked his hair back from the black eye.

  Manuel hesitated, and then answered, ‘I was thinking of Auntie Maria.’

  His grandmother sighed. ‘Yes, dear?’

  ‘I miss her – and Grandpa.’

  ‘We all do, dear.’ Micaela hugged him closer, as the fearsome pain of loss went through her once more. They sat in silent communion together, the chair rocking slightly under them.

  There was the patter of his mother’s carpet slippers, as she came downstairs. She called back up to Mrs Halloran, ‘Don’t let the girls bother you – send them down if you’re tired of them.’ As she hurried into the living-room-kitchen, she said in a quieter tone to Micaela, ‘I don’t want them to spend too much time with Effie – the girls’ll learn bad manners.’

  ‘Tut! Effie was a parlourmaid once – she knows her manners,’ Micaela immediately admonished.

  Rosita shrugged, and then began to discuss the strange Basque boy.

  She leaned against the sink and folded her arms, which were aching from hours of washing clothes and bedding on a scrubbing board. ‘There are a few other Basques scattered round the town – you do hear about them occasionally. Mostly, they’ve been here a long, long time.’

  ‘I was glad he came along,’ Manuel said with feeling; his eye was aching badly.

  His mother nodded. ‘You know, dear, you must learn not to get into fights.’

  Manuel sat up straight in Micaela’s lap, and the rocking chair rocked rather violently. ‘Stewart called me a dago,’ he said indignantly.

  Rosita sighed. ‘When you’re foreign, you have to ignore petty insults, my pet.’

  ‘I’m not foreign. I live here.’

  ‘Yes, dear. But you’re Basque, same as Brian is Chinese and Joey’s Irish.’

  ‘Are we all foreign?’

  ‘Down here, we are.’

  Manuel slumped back into his grandmother’s arms and gave up.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  About a week later, they met at the tram stop, two nondescript schoolboys in grey woollen shorts, their bare knees chapped by cold, damp winds. They both wore navy-blue gabardine macintoshes, and caps with the St Francis Xavier badge on them. Each carried on his back a satchel of books required for that evening’s homework. Neither boy looked particularly healthy, their complexions pale and eyes ringed.

  Manuel ventured a shy grin, and the older boy nodded lordly acknowledgement of it.

  A horsedrawn delivery van splashed through the puddles in the gutter. They both stepped back to avoid their shoes and socks being soaked, and the bigger boy asked, ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Manuel Echaniz. What’s yours?’

  ‘Arnador – Arnador Ganivet. Where do you live?’

  Manuel told him, and Arnador looked at him speculatively. Wapping Dock was where a lot of first-generation Basques lived. According to his father, they were poor and illiterate seamen working for de Larrinaga. It definitely was not what his mother would call a good address. His parents and his grandparents had all been born in Liverpool; they did not mix with common seamen’s families, though they were quite proud of their Basque origins. He wondered, if he brought a Basque boy home, which attitude would weigh heaviest with them, that he could speak good Basque or that he was lower class.

  He decided that he did not care; he admired Manuel for having taken a bad licking from a bully while defending his Basqueness. He grinned at Manuel, and asked, ‘How does your eye feel?’

&
nbsp; Manuel grinned back. ‘It feels OK. It’s a bit yellow still. Where do you live – which tram do you take?’

  ‘I usually bike to school, but I couldn’t today – I’ve got a couple of broken spokes – my uncle’s going to put new ones in tonight. Anyway, I’m going across the water – I’m going out to tea with my cousin.’ He frowned, and added, ‘She’s a girl. Awful bore.’

  As a cumbersome tram rolled down towards them, sparks flying from its pole when it touched a crossline, they stepped out into the street to get on it, and he added, ‘I live in Catherine Street. We’ve a flat – two floors.’ They swung up the winding stairs to the upper deck, and sat down together on a wooden, slatted seat at the front. As they took off their satchels and laid them at their feet, he went on, ‘A dentist has the ground floor. It’s handy for Dad – he’s a ship chandler, down on Chaloner Street. He likes to walk down the hill to work every day.’

  Manuel was impressed; he had never before heard of a Basque who owned his own business – he discounted the Basque shipowners in the city – to him, they were as far removed from normal life as earls or lords were. In his own small, sea-going world, everyone worked for somebody else.

  ‘Have you got any brothers or sisters?’ Manuel asked.

  ‘One sister – Josefa. She’s a nurse at the Ear, Nose and Throat on Myrtle Street – she walks to work as well. She’s nearly nineteen. Have you got any?’

  ‘Two little sisters.’

  ‘What does your dad do?’

  ‘He goes to sea.’

  They spent the rest of the journey down to the Pier Head exploring their interests in cricket and who they liked and disliked amongst the teaching staff at school.

  As they descended from the tram, Arnador to catch the ferry across the river, Manuel to cross the roads back to the Goree Piazzas and Strand Street to walk along to Wapping, they called cheerfully to each other, ‘’Bye. See you tomorrow.’