The Liverpool Basque (24 page)

Auntie Effie greeted him with affection and asked him in. Her face fell when, seated by her minute fire, he asked her if she could pay a bit towards her rent.

‘I did tell your mam I’d pay next week. I started a new job in the bottle factory – washing bottles and jam jars. Me chest is bothering me something awful, and I lost three days’ before I got this job.’ She nervously chewed her overlong thumbnail, and Manuel noticed that a thick grime lay under all her nails, despite having her hands in water much of the last two days.

Manuel waited. Effie’s mind worked like a clock about to run down.

She heaved a great sigh, and felt in her skirt pocket. ‘Bailiffs?’ she asked.

‘Monday morning,’ Manuel assured her. ‘Mam’s got till Sunday night to find a pound.’

He felt dreadful when she slowly counted out half a week’s rent into his hand. ‘I were paid two and a half days yesterday,’ she muttered, ‘and I don’t know what I’m going to do. Maybe, if I work Monday, the boss would let me have the money for that day.’

‘They will do that sometimes,’ Manuel said. ‘Pat told me once.’

Conor said flatly he hadn’t a cent. Not till next week. Iris simply wept, and her youngsters behind her looked like death’s heads. The hospital cleaner in the parlour said crossly that she had never missed paying her rent; it was unreasonable to ask her to pay in advance.

Manuel gave up.

That Friday night, Rosita, Francesca and Manuel worked on the silver boxes until after eleven o’clock. Francesca’s eyes drooped with fatigue; her back muscles and arms ached from working at a table too high for her. Nevertheless, when she heard the alarm clock go off in her mother’s room the next morning, she crawled out of bed, and joined her mother at the kitchen table, to slowly snip the pieces of baize for her. As soon as Manuel had finished his paper round, he joined them, to paint the insides of the boxes with glue.

Micaela made tea without milk or sugar; the two little girls were each given a slice of bread to eat. Francesca sat looking at her slice for a moment and then slowly tore it into two, to share it with Manuel.

‘You eat it up,’ he ordered firmly, and, when she hesitated, he told her, ‘The newsagent’s missus gave me a cup of tea and some biscuits.’

As the morning progressed, hunger bit into all of them, and they became slower.

Rosita’s voice was dull and hopeless, as she said, ‘We have to do eighteen boxes to make up the rent – and to pay the ferry across the river to deliver the money.’ She laughed suddenly and wildly. ‘I don’t know how I am going to manage next week, even if we manage to pay tomorrow.’

As if to deliberately add to their torment, the noise from outside the house seemed to be even more trying than usual; the riveters, the horses and carts and the clatter of clogs and boots on the pavement seemed particularly active. Sometimes the kitchen table shuddered as the great presses in the factory behind the house worked through the Saturday shift, so that Rosita had to pause, a strip of baize in her hand, until the upward swing of the biggest press allowed the table to be steady for a moment and she could quickly and accurately place the piece of baize in the box.

By eleven o’clock in the morning, they had completed sixteen boxes. Their time was short. Manuel quickly washed the worst of the glue off his hands, and began to pack the cutlery boxes into two cardboard containers. Though not terribly heavy, the two cardboard boxes were clumsy to carry, and Manuel said to his mother, ‘Wash your hands, Mam. I’ll carry these up to Mr Holley’s for you.’ His mother had not eaten since yesterday’s teatime, a meal of bread and margarine, and he feared that she might faint on her way to her employer’s warehouse. ‘Hurry, Mam. We can’t risk missing Mr Holley!’

Rosita wearily dragged herself to her feet, and did as he had bidden her. ‘All that work – three of us doing it – for thirteen shillings and fourpence!’ she said to Micaela. ‘And we still haven’t got a pound.’

Micaela nodded. Manuel said, ‘Well, it’s better than nothing,’ and he carefully tied twine round the two cardboard boxes to make them easier to carry.

They caught Mr Holley, just as he was tidying up before
going home. He amiably checked the boxes, however, and paid the stony-faced woman.

Outside, on the pavement, Rosita looked up at her son. She was swaying on her feet. ‘I’ll have to use the two and sixpence you gave me for food,’ she said brokenly. ‘I’d hoped to put it towards the rent – but I can’t. We must eat.’

Manuel put his arm in hers to steady her, and asked uneasily, ‘Do you think Mr Fleet would accept a bit less?’

‘Not a hope. He meant what he said.’ A tear trickled slowly down Rosita’s cheek. ‘And I can’t get any more on tick at the corner shop.’

That tear and the hopelessly disillusioned look in his mother’s tired blue eyes were something Manuel never forgot.

As they walked slowly towards a corner shop, Manuel said, ‘If Jean Baptiste was in work, he’d help us.’

‘Certainly – but he isn’t. They’re only saved because their boys are older and are working.’

‘I could ask Mr Ganivet,’ suggested Manuel.

‘We can’t.’

‘He’s very kind, Mam.’

‘He is,’ responded Rosita with feeling. Then she told him how his school expenses had been paid for over two years by the kindly chandler.

Manuel was stunned. ‘Does Arnador know?’

‘I don’t think so.’

They paused at the entrance to the little shop. ‘You should have told me,’ he reproached her.

‘I thought that if I did you would feel awkward with Arnador.’

He did not answer her, because he did not know whether that would have been the case.

She said gently, ‘It’s only a week, now, to the end of term. And you’ll always be able to say that you went to
St Francis Xavier’s until you were fourteen. It’s a good recommendation for work.’

Manuel nodded bewildered agreement. It would have been even better, if he could have stayed until he was sixteen or seventeen and got his Matric. While his mother entered the shop and he waited for her outside, he stared unseeingly at the tiny window space of the shop, packed with dusty cards advertising everything from tobacco to paraffin and Sunlight soap, and tried to think of someone who could help them.

He realized for the first time how the number of Basque families in the neighbourhood had been sharply reduced by the war, when the menfolk found it safer to sail in Spanish ships out of Bilbao. Others had been able to move to more salubrious neighbourhoods, as their children grew up and began to earn. Of the remaining little community, Mr Saitua was not the only man out of work; and there were one or two families with whom they had never been friends, because Grandpa Juan had not approved of them – his polite term, Manuel suspected, for small vendettas; like anyone else, Basques could carry grudges for a long time.

He wished suddenly that Arnador was his brother, so that he could confide to him the details of the nightmare they were facing. Arnador was so sensible.

But Arnador was not a blood brother, and, moreover, Arnador’s father had already helped them very generously.

Manuel felt sick with hunger and fear.

On Saturday night, the family rejoiced in a meal of potatoes boiled with chopped cabbage. They cooked it on a shovelful of coal borrowed from the widowed hospital cleaner who lived in the parlour, an Irish woman who kept to herself. In fact, the family hardly ever saw her except on Friday, which was rent day, because she worked such long hours and tended to stay in bed on her days off.

Nobody went to Mass on Sunday morning. Instead, Rosita and Francesca began work on a new pile of boxes, given to Rosita by Mr Holley in return for the completed ones. Manuel did his heavy Sunday newspaper round first, and then sat down to help. Whether they saved their home or not, the family knew they must try to obtain a little money on Monday, in the hope of keeping themselves out of the workhouse; Mr Holley was their only hope.

The spectre of the workhouse haunted Manuel particularly. In a week’s time, he would be looking for work, and being dressed in workhouse uniform would not recommend him to an employer; in their eyes, it would label him a shiftless ne’er-do-well. He would be wiser simply to take to the streets, he thought passionately.

Little Maria played in the street with one of Peggy O’Brien’s little girls; and Micaela, wrapped in a blanket, silently nursed her arthritis. They had each had a piece of bread for breakfast. They had been unable to boil water to make tea, and this had made the women feel very low.

They had worked for a couple of hours, when their boredom was broken by an exclamation from Micaela, who was fighting her way out of the encompassing blanket.
‘Claire Carrandi – she would. It’s not much to ask, is it?’

Rosita paused in her careful smoothing of a piece of baize. ‘Who?’

‘The undertaker’s wife. You must remember her! She’s a Basque – married to Carrandi, who died of a fever in the West Indies. We were quite friendly for years. Then, when she was widowed, she married Ould Biggs, the undertaker – and that seemed to take her away, somehow.’

‘I do remember – when I was a young girl.’

‘She’s nearer my age than yours. I haven’t seen her in a long time. Juan gave her hubbie plenty of carting work – transporting the emigrants and their luggage down to the dock. Ould Biggs owes us plenty. Now, Sunday afternoon is a good time to go to see an old friend. Little Maria can take me up this afternoon, while you get on with the boxes. Claire will lend it.’

Rosita looked a little anxiously at her mother. ‘Could you manage the walk up to Park Road, Mam?’

‘I’m the only one who can ask her, so I’ll do it – somehow.’

It was true that probably only Micaela could negotiate a loan from Claire; but it was with reluctance that Rosita watched her set out, with her arm around the shoulder of Little Maria. The journey was not a long one, except for the pain that Micaela would probably experience, and the fact that she could not see.

As Rosita came back into the kitchen-living-room, Manuel sensed her worry. ‘Granny’ll be all right,’ he assured her, as he dabbed glue into a corner of a box. ‘Little Maria’s good with her granny – she warns of all the steps up and down – and the traffic.’

Though it did take a long, painful time to crawl up Sparling Street and along Park Lane to the undertaker’s premises, Micaela’s visit to Claire was not a protracted one.

The Biggses’ front door was shut, and the whole place
seemed locked in the calm of Sunday afternoon. Micaela told Maria to lead her down the side of the building and into a cobbled yard, where lay a couple of carts and a toast-rack horse bus, together with a dust-laden black carriage, all with their shafts up. At the back of the yard were stables in which the horses could be heard shuffling and snorting. Beside the stables were two wide doors, held shut by a large padlock, behind which rested the pride of Ould Biggs’s collection, his beautifully carved black hearse with its etched glass panels.

‘There’s a door up some steps at the left,’ Micaela told Maria. ‘Run up the steps and bang the knocker.’

Maria had to stand on tiptoe to reach the lion’s head which was the door knocker. It gave a reverberating thud, when she let go of it. She ran back down the steps, to stand by Micaela. While they waited for someone to answer, she eased her round to face the door.

An elderly maid, with long black streamers falling from her white, goffered cap, responded to the knock; Ould Biggs never knew when a bereaved client might hammer on his door, and he insisted that the maid give the right impression of solemnity.

Micaela asked to see Mrs Biggs, and was politely asked into the big sombre hall. To Maria, it was rather frightening; she wondered where Mr Biggs kept the bodies.

Claire came out of a back room immediately, and sashayed down the hall towards them. She was wearing a black, knee-length frock with a small, white frilled collar, her plump legs encased in flesh-coloured silk stockings. Her very high-heeled, black patent shoes were held in place by three cross-straps, each with a glittering black button.

Maria stared at her in fascination. She had never seen an older woman in such short skirts. Her grandmother was garbed from chin to ankle; she had not changed her style in fifty years. Even her mother still wore gathered black skirts that reached her ankles.

‘Micaela!’

‘Claire!’ exclaimed Micaela, as Maria helped her up the steps, and led her into Claire’s open arms. They kissed each other on both cheeks, both genuinely glad to meet again. The visitors were led into the dining-room at the back of the house, because, Claire explained, Mr Biggs always had his Sunday nap in the sitting-room.

Claire’s last visit to Micaela had been after Juan’s death; she had sent a note of sympathy at Aunt Maria’s death, not sure how to cope with the fact that Maria had been buried by the City because, owing to her severe illness, she had been uninsurable. She now felt guilty that she had not visited her for a very long time. She felt worse when Micaela stumbled when seating herself, and Claire perceived that there must be something wrong with her sight; maybe that was why Micaela had not visited
her
lately.

As she rang the bell for the maid, she inquired in Basque, ‘Is everyone in the family all right?’

Micaela’s face crinkled up in a smile. ‘Nobody’s dead,’ she assured her jokingly in the same language, and Little Maria squirmed, and laughed up at their hostess.

Claire smiled back at the child. ‘God be thanked,’ she said virtuously, and then exclaimed, ‘She’s so like you, Micaela!’

Little Maria was hurt. Surely she didn’t look so wizened and untidy as Grandma did?

She was consoled by a large piece of fruit cake from a tray brought in by the maid. She sat quietly eating it, currant by currant, while the two ladies caught up with accounts of their lives since Aunt Maria had died.

Maria became anxious that her grandmother seemed to have forgotten the family’s dire need of a small loan; and that she made a joke about their running a boarding-house again. ‘It’s different from having emigrants go through – but it brings life into the house,’ Micaela finished up.

Maria noticed that her grandmother was cautiously feeling
round for her cup of tea; she had managed to set it on the table, originally; but now, apparently, she could not judge where it was.

‘Allow me,’ said Claire quickly, and put the cup and saucer carefully into Micaela’s hand. ‘Are you having trouble with your sight?’

Grandma took a sip of tea and then laughed deprecatingly. ‘I can’t see at all, except light and shadow,’ she admitted baldly. ‘I can still knit, though.’ She turned towards Maria, who had stolidly returned to eating her cake. ‘Little Maria – and Frannie have to be my eyes.’

‘It must be very difficult for you,’ Claire sympathized.

‘Rosita’s good to me.’

Micaela’s cake on its flowered plate still lay on the table. Maria slipped down from her chair, and said, ‘Give me your empty cup, Granny, and I’ll give you your cake.’

‘Thank you, dumpling.’

When it was handed to her, Micaela felt across the plate to locate the cake and then broke it into two. She took one half and stuffed it into her mouth. Saliva gathered at the corners of her lips, as she swallowed it almost whole.

Claire watched her in dismay. Then she jumped up and pulled the bell for the maid. ‘How stupid of Mary Ellen,’ she exclaimed. ‘She forgot to put the scones on the tray.’

When the maid appeared, Claire instructed her to bring in a plate of buttered scones. She said to Micaela, ‘Mary Ellen makes the best scones you’ve ever tasted – you simply have to try them.’

Little Maria gave a small sigh of anticipation. Scones as well as cake?

Micaela felt that she should have told Claire not to go to so much trouble for her – but her hunger was intolerable – and Basques were very hospitable, anyway.

Three scones and another piece of cake later, Micaela remained seated for another ten minutes or so and then
said that she should go home. ‘Come and visit me soon,’ she urged. ‘I would enjoy it so much.’

Totally dismayed, Little Maria thought that her grandmother had forgotten the money they so badly needed. She did not dare to mention it herself, and felt quite frantic when Micaela told her to go ahead into the hall and put on her coat like a good girl.

The two friends embraced again, both happy to have been reunited by the visit. Micaela drew back a little in Claire’s arms, and asked diffidently, ‘Claire, could you lend me two shillings, until I can get up to the post office to draw some money tomorrow afternoon?’

Claire replied without hesitation, thankful to assuage her sense that she had neglected Micaela. ‘Of course,’ she agreed. She loosed her hold on the old woman, and went to the sideboard, opened a drawer and took out a change purse. She pressed a florin into Micaela’s hand.

Later, her husband came sleepily out of the sitting-room, trailing sheets of newspaper after him. ‘Who came?’ he inquired.

‘Micaela Barinèta – Juan’s wife. You remember them?’

‘Oh, aye.’

‘She’s blind now. They seem in a pretty bad way – do you know, she was wearing a shawl – not a coat – she never did that when Juan was alive – at least, not on Sundays. Poor Rosita’s husband was lost in the
Esperanza Larrinaga
, you may remember – it was in the paper, the time when I had Spanish flu. It took me such a long time to get better that I never went to see her.’

Henry Biggs took his pipe and tobacco pouch out of his jacket pocket and sat down on a dining-chair, while his wife stood by him, staring into the blue flames of the gas fire and remembering Rosita’s handsome husband. She roused herself to say, ‘Young Manuel’s finishing school next week. He was in St Francis Xavier’s. Must’ve been a
struggle to keep him there – because they haven’t got a wage-earner now. Nobody.’

‘The lad can go to sea. That’ll help them.’ Henry lit his pipe. He then let his hand run up the backs of his wife’s silk-clad legs, and tickled her gently.

‘Oh, Henry!’ she exclaimed. ‘You really are naughty!’

‘It’s Sunday afternoon,’ he reminded her, as she gave a delighted, though muffled shriek at his further advances.