The Liverpool Basque (10 page)

The ruckus brought a priest from a back room. Manuel did not know him, but the long cassock and sandalled feet were comforting. ‘It’s Grandpa,’ he wept to the young man. ‘And me mam says to get Father Felipe quick.’

The housekeeper grudgingly gave way to the priest, who squatted down on his heels until his face was level with the child’s. ‘Don’t cry,’ he said in stiff English. ‘Tell me what happened.’

‘He fell off the ladder – and he’s lying in the yard – and Mam says to get Father Felipe.’

The young priest’s face immediately became very grave. ‘Wait here a minute,’ he said. ‘I’ll get Father Felipe. What’s your name?’

Manuel told him.

Father Felipe was commendably quick. He gathered what he needed in order to administer Extreme Unction, took Manuel by the hand, and together they hurried down the narrow, black streets. ‘Did your mother send you for the doctor?’

‘No,’ panted Manuel. He was a little surprised at the question; when you fell down Mam bandaged you up – or, maybe, Mrs Connolly, who was very good at it.

The priest’s dark face looked suddenly more lined than usual; he glanced compassionately down at the child who held his hand so confidently; the death of the man of the house in this desperately poor neighbourhood was a particularly terrible loss. He hoped he was in time to administer the Last Rites.

As she knelt beside her mother, Rosita’s stomach heaved and she feared she would vomit. Her breath came in short gasps, as she made herself cautiously slip her hand under her father’s pullover to feel for a heartbeat. She could not find one, so she took his limp wrist to feel his pulse.

Nothing.

She put her arm round her mother’s bent back. ‘I’m sorry, Mam,’ she said brokenly.

Her mother did not answer her; it was as if she had forgotten her daughter’s presence. Even when Maria, clutching her flannel nightgown modestly round her, crept into the yard in bare feet and knelt down on the other side of her, Micaela seemed unaware of her daughters. Her whole being was focused upon her husband, as if she believed that if she kept on crooning to him, he would come round from being stunned; yet it was clear from what she had said that, somewhere in her shocked mind, she understood that he was dead.

‘What happened?’ whispered Maria. She was shivering with cold and fear. ‘Is he dead?’

Rosita nodded. She laid her cheek on her mother’s back, and hoped she would not vomit; her current pregnancy was not proceeding as comfortably as the earlier ones had and, most mornings, she felt nauseated.

‘Please, Madeleine, come quick!’ she prayed, as she waited for Madeleine Saitua to arrive.

Maria began to cry, the slow, helpless crying of the very weak. Through all her painful, hopeless illness, her father had been the pillar of her life; her mother nursed her, but
her father had ungrudgingly provided a home for her. ‘Even extra milk,’ she moaned aloud.

A little startled, Rosita lifted her head. Maria saw the movement, and rubbed the tears out of her eyes, as she explained. ‘He thought of everything for me – even more milk.’

‘He did,’ replied Rosita in a low voice. ‘He looked after us all.’ She hugged her shocked mother more tightly, while beyond the brick wall of the yard, the riveters continued their merciless clangour, and beneath her the puddle in which she was kneeling slowly soaked through her heavy, serge skirt. Would Madeleine never come?

Her agitated thoughts leapt fearfully to the future, as the import of Maria’s words sank in. Pedro would now be the sole breadwinner; he would have seven people to maintain, if she included the baby now on its way.

Still in her carpet slippers, Madeleine Saitua laboured up the front steps and ran through the open front door and through the kitchen-living-room to the back door. She was a heavy woman, unused to moving fast, and she had to pause for a moment to catch her breath, as through the back door she observed the three women kneeling round Juan.

‘Looked like something out of a church window, they did – and him so peaceful,’ she said that night to an acquaintance in the Baltic, while she enjoyed a sustaining glass of port and considerable attention from other customers, always interested in a tragedy.

Now, however, she was forced into action.

At the sound of the scurrying flip-flap of her carpet slippers as she descended the back steps, Maria shuffled round on her knees to see who was coming; through her flannel nightgown the rough bricks hurt her knees, and her whimpering became a loud wail.

Very shaken, Madeleine peered down at Juan and at her old friend, Micaela. There was no doubt in her mind that
she was looking at a dead man; the angle of his head indicated that quite clearly.

Rosita scrambled to her feet. She was so white that Madeleine was immediately alarmed that she would miscarry.

She did not want another catastrophe on her hands, so she said sharply to her, ‘Take Maria in and wrap her up by the fire. And get yourself a glass of water – and sit down. I’ll take care of your mother – the boys’ll be here in a minute – they’re just putting their kecks on – lucky they’re both home – Domingo’s on the evening shift this week – and there’s no hurry for Vicente on a Saturday.’

She bent over Micaela who had ignored her arrival. She said soothingly, ‘We’re getting help, luv. It won’t be a minute.’

Taking Rosita’s place, she squatted down on her heels and put her arm round the mourning woman. Then she leaned forward and firmly closed the dead man’s eyes. She looked up at Rosita, who had taken her shivering sister’s arm and lifted her to her feet. ‘You’d better call the doctor,’ she advised.

‘It’s too late,’ responded Rosita dully. She tugged Maria’s arm. ‘Come on, now. Be brave. Come on – indoors.’

Still wailing, Maria turned towards the house. Rosita bent down to stroke her mother’s white hair, trying frantically to think how to comfort her. ‘Manuel’s gone to fetch Father Felipe, Mama,’ she told her, her voice choking on the words.

Her mother made no response. She continued to sit with her husband’s head in her lap and to stroke his cheek, while she muttered brokenly, ‘My dear, my dear.’

Mrs Saitua sighed. She did not argue about the need for a doctor, though she knew someone would have to tell the coroner of the accident; Juan was, indeed, beyond medical aid. In a minute or two reality would strike Micaela; she
would be wild with grief; and there was the chance, also, that Rosita might begin to miscarry. She hoped there was some whisky or brandy in the house. Maybe Father Felipe would insist on the doctor’s being called, she thought anxiously, as she muttered to Micaela, ‘There, there, luv. There, there.’

She was thankful when, almost immediately, there was a distant knock on the front door, followed by the tramp of hob-nailed boots. Her sons burst into the yard, one of them still struggling into a navy-blue pullover.

‘Christ!’ Domingo exclaimed. ‘What’s to do, Mam?’

Their mother looked up at them fiercely. ‘Hush!’ she admonished. ‘Juan’s had an awful accident. Lift him into the house – put him on the couch in the sitting-room. Gently, now!’

She turned back to Micaela. ‘The boys are going to carry Juan into the house, dear. They’ll be very careful of him. Now, you come along of me.’ She put her hand under her friend’s chin and made her turn to look at her. ‘Come on, luv. The rain’s starting again.’

The shaken young men edged round the two women. Domingo very cautiously lifted the dead man’s head away from Micaela’s lap. Micaela glanced at him in bewilderment.

Madeleine stood up and put her hands under the armpits of the tiny kneeling woman; then, bracing herself, she eased her to her feet. It was like lifting a sagging sack of potatoes. Micaela’s eyes were on the boys, who were used to shifting heavy weights. As they picked up her husband she saw the pity in their eyes. The agony of her loss struck her and she opened her mouth and screamed.

The terrible shrieks roused her neighbours. They whipped their shawls over their shoulders and shot out into the street. Bridget Connolly was standing on her step, about to open her front door. She froze at the sound of the scream.

‘Holy Mother!’ exclaimed young Peggy O’Brien from
two doors down the street. ‘What on earth was that?’ She and two other women rushed towards Bridget. ‘Which house was it?’

‘Micaela – Rosita, I think!’

She ran down her steps and up the Barinètas’ steps. Followed by the other women, she burst into the narrow hallway, to find her way blocked by Domingo and Vicente turning into the parlour with their heavy burden. Behind her, women crowded up the steps, their speculations cut short by a glimpse of the young men’s grim faces.

The little crowd fell back, to allow Father Felipe, with Manuel clutching his hand, to enter a house close to pandemonium. Already terrified, Manuel clung to the priest.

As the cleric’s presence was realized, people began to quieten. Space was made for him to squeeze into the small parlour, leading the child with him.

They were both faced with the dead man clumsily propped up on the horsehair sofa; Micaela was on her knees, her face buried in his lap as she loudly lamented something about a drainpipe and that it was all her fault.

While Manuel hid his face in the priest’s coarse robe and clung to him, Father Felipe resolutely took command. He recognized most of those present, including Maria still in her nightgown, though someone had thrown a shawl over her shoulders. The other daughter, Rosita, looked as if she would collapse at any moment, as she turned magnificent, sorrowful blue eyes upon him. In the distance, he could hear a baby shrieking, untended. At the back of the tiny room, two young men – the Saitua boys – and their mother stood uneasily watching the scene. Three other women had crowded in; and, when entering, he had pushed past three more, whispering at the foot of the front steps.

His first thought was for the terrified child clinging to him. He recognized Bridget Connolly standing to his left; Bridget, he knew, had a lot of experience of children and nursing. He bent and picked up Manuel, as he spoke to
her. ‘Could you take Manuel and look after him for a little while?’ he asked in stilted English.

She automatically opened her arms to the white-faced little boy, who showed no signs of wanting to go to his mother. ‘Of course. Now, you come with Auntie Bridget, me dove. Father Felipe’s going to do what he can to help your granddad and grandma – and your mam.’ She hugged the boy to her, and wrapped her shawl round him. ‘You come and have some dinner with our Mary and Joey.’ Space was made for her, as she eased through the parlour door. ‘And then you can have a little play together in our yard, till your mam comes for you.’ Her soft Irish voice and familiar red face were comforting and normal, so he went with her without demur; Grandpa looked so peculiar and everybody had obviously been making such a fuss before the arrival of Father Felipe that the instinct was to escape. He knew from experience that Auntie Bridget always gave you a straight answer – she never said ‘perhaps’ or ‘maybe’ – so if she said that Mother would come for him, Mother undoubtedly would.

As they squeezed past him, the priest patted the child’s back and smiled at him, ‘Well done, Manuel,’ he said. ‘You were a clever lad to bring the message so quickly.’

Manuel smiled wanly back; only later did he appreciate that he had been praised by a priest; it was like being praised by God himself, he decided; it was something good shining through an awful day.

Father Felipe turned to Mrs Saitua, who seemed calmer than the other women. ‘Has a doctor been sent for?’ he inquired.

She looked across at Rosita. ‘No,’ she said.

Rosita said, ‘He’s dead.’

‘You should get a doctor immediately, Mrs Echaniz.’

Rosita nodded helplessly, her strength nearly gone.

‘I’ll go,’ Domingo told her, and thankfully left the room.

Puzzling over his notebook seventy-eight years later, Old Manuel wondered how to explain to Lorilyn the trauma of that week, how his childhood home had been invaded by an unknown something called Death. Grandpa had simply fallen off a ladder, and had in a second or two gone to God. It was called dying. Nobody had tried to hide it from him; in fact, he had been called upon to help – he had run to get Mrs Saitua and Father Felipe.

In the sanitary world of North America, at the age of nineteen what would Lorilyn have seen of death, other than through the monstrosity of television? Would she have any idea that the victim’s pain and death would be an agony to those who loved him?

Nowadays, on the whole, people lived long lives. Pain and death were dealt with by hospitals and batteries of doctors and health-care workers; even the carnage of the streets was quickly shovelled into ambulances and the streets washed down, so that no one would be offended by the sight of blood. At the end you lay in a mortuary until you had been tidied up and made fit for public inspection.

Would she even know how to lay out a loved one, as he knew his mother and grandmother had done for his grandfather? Would she sit a whole night by her dead father as Maria had done, saying her rosary over and over again? Doing all of it as a final outpouring of affection?

He knew that she would not.

It was a sore point with him that he himself had not been allowed to lay Kathleen out. Faith had been on her way to visit her mother, that morning, and had used her own key to enter the house. She found him sitting by the bed in the sitting-room, holding her dead mother’s hand, and she had immediately taken charge. Her face stony, she had consulted the yellow pages of the telephone book, called a funeral director, called her husband, asked if he had had any breakfast, insisted on his moving into the
dining-room and having some coffee. He was so exhausted that he obeyed her. The only thing he had said to her was, ‘Call the doctor.’

He had not finished the coffee Faith had thrust into his hand, when the doctor arrived, followed closely by the funeral director. They held a committee over poor Kathleen’s body, and then, while the young general practitioner came to sit with him for a few minutes, Kathleen was removed.

He half rose from the table in shock, when he saw what the funeral director and his men were doing. He looked in bewilderment at the doctor, but words would not come to him – he was so tired. He wanted time with Kathleen, but the doctor grasped his arm firmly, and said kindly, ‘Everything’s been taken care of – you must rest now. Faith will deal with everything.’

His rage at his daughter’s quiet efficiency had simmered in him throughout the funeral and for long afterwards. He never considered that she was holding in her own grief, while she tried to make things easier for him.

Since there was no reason to stay in his own house, he went home with her for a few days and slept most of the time, until the coroner released the body and they went back to Victoria for the funeral.