The Liverpool Basque (25 page)

That Sunday evening, Manuel saw his mother on to the Seacombe ferry, which would take her across the river to Roy Fleet’s house. In her clutch purse she carried a pound in small change, and, separately in her pocket, fourpence to cover her fares, which she would pay on the other side of the river.

As the ferry backed away from the landing stage with much splashing and shuddering, he waved to her, and then stood idly for a few minutes looking at the ships anchored in the river. They ranged from small, grubby tramp steamers, with the crew’s washing flapping merrily over the forecastle, to a huge Chinese freighter, so rusty that Manuel wondered how it had made the voyage from Shanghai, which, in chipped, white paint, was indicated as its port of registration. Tugs were moving a stately White Star transatlantic liner up river, perhaps to the Gladstone Graving Dock. In the distance was a single, tiny yacht, also going up river.

He was hailed by Domingo Saitua, who worked for the ferries and was waiting for the next New Brighton boat to come in. He wandered over to him, and, as the landing stage began to heave up and down under the pressure of the incoming tide, he asked Domingo what chance there was of a job on the ferries.

Stocky, beer-bellied Domingo looked him over. ‘How old are you, now?’

‘Fourteen,’ lied Manuel. ‘I’m leaving school next week.’

Domingo straightened his navy jersey, emblazoned in white with the words
Wallasey Ferries
. He made a glum
face, and said briskly in Basque, ‘Not a hope, lad. They like men who’ve been to sea. For instance, I went to sea with my uncle for a while – he was a fisherman.’

Manuel replied stoutly, ‘My dad and my granddad went to sea.’

Anxious to comfort a boy who was his neighbour, Domingo said, ‘Oh, aye, they did. You’re a likely-looking youngster. Try getting in with a ship’s steward, who’d look out for a job for you – find you a job as pantry boy, like. Better than being a deck boy.’

Manuel agreed. He could not, however, recall anyone in the Basque community who was a steward; if there had been one, he would not have hesitated to ask for help.

Domingo saw that the New Brighton ferry was coming in, so he prepared to catch a rope from it. ‘Good luck, Mannie,’ he said.

Manuel went home to do some prep for school. When ten o’clock came, he was worried that his mother had not returned, so he told Micaela that he would go down to the Pier Head again, to meet her.

The landing stage was deserted, except for Domingo, and he said that he had not seen Mrs Echaniz land. Manuel began to wonder if, possibly, she had lost the twopence for her return journey. His aching lack of food and his increasing apprehension made him feel dizzy. He wondered what he should do if she were not on the last ferry.

As the night took over, the silence on the landing stage became oppressive. Domingo went off to attend to his work, and only the slow rhythmic plop of a tug tied up at the end of the dock or the distant sounds of voices from ships anchored in the river broke the quietness.

To his intense relief, Rosita dragged herself off the eleven o’clock ferry. He hastened forward to take her arm and ask, ‘Whatever happened?’

Under the brim of her out-of-date black straw hat, her
eyes glittered in the rays of a lamp. ‘I had to walk much further than I expected to their house. They were nice to me – Roy and his missus, though. Kept me talking a bit.’

As they ambled slowly up the gangway which led to the Pier Head itself, she described her visit.

‘Roy was still at church, when I got there, but he had told his missus that I might come, so she stayed home. She’s a nice lady, like you don’t see very often, and she’s got a lovely sitting-room, all in green. We had a nice cup of tea together.’

Rosita paused, as they crossed the street. On the other side, a few prostitutes loitered in the shadows, their faces occasionally dimly lit up, as they struck matches to light their cigarettes. When they had passed them, she continued, ‘I told her what happened to your dad – she was horrified, especially when I explained how I’m a widow but not a widow. She asked if I had a job, and I told her about the cutlery boxes, and how I had applied to Cripps’ and was hoping they’d find me some sewing, because I used to work for them. And I told her I’d one or two lodgers living with me – but I didn’t tell her how many! I said how they’d steal from me if I didn’t work at home. She was so sympathetic, I felt like crying.’

They reached Wapping, where even the lights of the Baltic Fleet had been turned off. Manuel squeezed his mother’s arm comfortingly, and asked what Mr Fleet had said about the rent.

‘He said he thinks it’ll be all right, if I don’t get further behind – and pay a shilling a week off the arrears. He’s going to talk to the landlord himself.’

As they stood on their own doorstep, Rosita lifted her eyes to her hungry son, put her hands on his shoulders and laid her head against his chest. She burst into tears.

‘Oh, Mam! Don’t cry. Everything’s going to be all right. You’ll see.’

She looked up and smiled through her tears. ‘Yes, lovey,
we’ll manage, I expect. I’m crying with relief, and because she was so kind. It was such a relief to tell somebody. I couldn’t even bring myself to tell Bridget – she’s got enough worries of her own at present, what with her hubbie being out of work – though she must have guessed how hard things are with us.’

Though Mrs Fleet knew that her husband had to be tough with some of the tenants for whom he was responsible, she was genuinely moved by Rosita’s story of her woes, and she did not forget her.

Every Thursday afternoon, she went to Liverpool to shop and meet some of her friends over a cup of tea in Lyons’ tea shop. On the Monday following Rosita’s visit, she scribbled a short note to a friend she had not seen for a number of weeks; Muriel was a cutter, who had worked for Sloan, Dressmaker, ever since Mrs Ada Sloan, dressmaker, had set herself up in 82. Bold Street, in 1915. Dorothy Fleet invited her to lunch at Fuller’s on the following Thursday, and when they met, she asked her elegant friend for outwork for Rosita.

As Muriel nibbled a sandwich and considered this, Dorothy said anxiously, ‘I wouldn’t ask anyone else but you – we’ve known each other so long. And you did tell me, once, that you have been awfully busy for the last few seasons altering the dresses your clients bought in previous years.’

Muriel’s neatly pencilled eyebrows rose a little. ‘Yes, we still are.’

‘Mrs Echaniz was trained by Cripps’. By the sound of it, she’s done every kind of sewing in her time …’ Dorothy urged. ‘They don’t have any work for her at the moment.’

‘Cripps’ don’t do as many alterations as we do – they take up a lot of time. But the client returns to us when she wants something new! So it’s worth it.’ Muriel laughed delicately, and her jet earrings swung. She tucked a curl
absently back under her small cloche hat, and then looked pensively down at her coffee. Finally, she asked, ‘What’s the woman like to look at?’

‘Clean and very neat. Shabby, though. She’s still quite pretty.’

‘You’re really quite taken with her, aren’t you?’

Dorothy smiled faintly. ‘I suppose I am. I hate to see a bright, intelligent woman ground down. She needs work very badly, Muriel,’ she pleaded.

Muriel sighed. ‘Well, I’ll try – though I’m not sure what I can do. We’ve more than enough outworkers, as it is. What’s her house like – is it clean?’

‘I asked Roy that – because of the fine materials she might be sewing. He said it always was when he was actually collecting their rent – before he got promoted to run the whole agency.’

‘I’d need a reference from Cripps’. Could
you
give her a personal reference?’

‘Certainly.’ Dorothy pushed a glass dish of dainty sandwiches towards her guest.

Muriel refused another sandwich. ‘With these new short dresses, I have to watch my figure – flatness is the fashion now!’ She slipped on her gloves, smoothing the soft leather over her long fingers, and picked up her clutch handbag. ‘Get me the references. Perhaps I can get her a little finishing, to see how good she is.’

The following day, an astonished Rosita received a letter from Dorothy Fleet, telling her to get a reference from Cripps’ and, on any weekday morning, to take it, with the enclosed reference from Dorothy herself, to the back door of Sloan’s, Bold Street, so that she could be interviewed by Miss Muriel Hamilton, with a view to being given some outwork to do.

Wildly excited, she read the missive to Micaela.

‘Jesus Mary!’ exclaimed Micaela, pushing herself upright
on the sofa. Then she said in Basque, ‘Make yourself as smart as you can; Sloan’s are fine dressmakers, as you well know.’

Manuel heard the news immediately he came home from school. He threw down his satchel, and hugged her. ‘It’s a new beginning, Mam.’

Over the weekend, Rosita’s grey-streaked red curls, which normally hung untidily over her shoulders, were shampooed with Sunlight soap and combed up into a neat chignon. Then she cut a black skirt into a narrower, shorter fashion to give her a more modern appearance, and, for the sake of speed, machined it on Bridget’s treadle sewing machine. Bridget lent her a plain black coat to go over it, both for her visit to Cripps’ and to Sloan’s.

‘Aye, luv, I hope it leads to something decent for yez,’ she said to Rosita, as she kissed her and wished her well.

At first the work given to her was routine hemming or unpicking, but soon she began to receive more complicated work. She sat long hours at her kitchen table, which was covered with a white sheet to protect the delicate materials she stitched so carefully. At the beginning, she earned little more than she would have done lining cutlery boxes; but it was clean work for which she had been very well trained.

When he was not looking for work or writing letters of application, Manuel lined cutlery boxes for her. He was helped by Francesca. Both girls were free, now that the summer holidays had begun, and, to give their mother time for her sewing, they did many of the household tasks.

The tenants, as they passed through the kitchen-living-room, were very interested in the pretty materials of Rosita’s new work; she had to reprove them sharply when they wanted to touch the delicate georgettes and fine wools.

If I can get enough work, I’ll stop renting the front room,
Rosita promised herself savagely, and make it into a workroom.

Dorothy Fleet and Muriel Hamilton often went on a Saturday afternoon to a matinée at the Empire Theatre; and, occasionally during these outings, Dorothy would inquire if Rosita continued to do satisfactory work. Her gentle reminder of Rosita’s existence at the bottom of the dressmaking world eventually bore fruit. When a cuff hand was required, Rosita was asked to work two full days a week in the workrooms.

For the first time since she had lost Pedro, Rosita had a glimmering of hope that life would improve. She jumped at the offer, and hoped that a noisy bolt which Manuel managed to put on the cellar door would prove sufficient deterrent to light-fingered tenants – Micaela would certainly hear if the squeaky bolt was drawn.

On the Monday morning after Rosita’s trip across the Mersey to pay the rent, Manuel left home ostensibly to go to school. He had eaten a breakfast of a slice of bread with milkless tea, Effie having boiled a kettle for them on her fire. He had no lunch in his satchel.

If his mother had not already been hard at work on her cutlery boxes, she might have noticed that he turned left along the street, instead of right; if she had seen him, she would have come flying after him to inquire where he thought he was going, since school lay in the opposite direction.

Manuel had no intention of going to school that morning. To make him less obviously a truant schoolboy to any passing police constable, he had put his St Francis Xavier cap into his plain brown satchel.

Bearing in mind Domingo Saitua’s suggestion that he should find a ship’s steward who might look out for a job as pantry boy for him, he was now marching determinedly along Chaloner Street to see Mr Ganivet in his chandlery warehouse. It was just possible that Mr Ganivet himself might give him a job; but, in any case, he had recalled from a conversation at Arnador’s house, that the chandler sometimes did business with stewards; Mr Ganivet had been telling his wife about a steward who had returned fifty teapots, because the spouts dripped so badly on the white linen tablecloths of his First Class dining-room.

Considering that everybody the boy knew was complaining how bad times were, the Ganivet warehouse was very busy. At the loading bays, horses and carts vied with
two snorting lorries trying to back in; and men in thick cotton aprons shouted to each other, while a closed pantechnicon eased out of the double gates.

He stopped one hurrying youth to ask where the office was – Mr Ganivet always referred to working in his office. He was directed to a narrow stone, corkscrew staircase which wound up through the centre of the eighteenth-century building.

At the door of his office, Mr Ganivet, his face nearly purple, was shouting at a bald-headed wisp of a man in a beige cotton jacket, who during brief gaps in the shouting said humbly, ‘Yes, Sir,’ or ‘No, Sir.’

Manuel loitered at a discreet distance in the wooden-floored passage until the exchange petered out and the reprimanded man had zipped past him, looking very chastened. Mr Ganivet continued to stand at the door of his office, trying to regain his breath. As the high colour in his face subsided, he noticed the boy in the passage.

‘Good gracious, Manuel! What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in school?’.

Seventy-odd years later, Old Manuel remembered vividly his sense of panic at the question fired at him. Of course, he should have been in school. Mr Ganivet began to roll down his shirt sleeves over his hairy arms, as Manuel gaped at him, unable to speak.

The older man turned into the littered, dusty office, glancing back over his shoulder at the white-faced boy. ‘Come in, come in, lad,’ he ordered not unkindly. ‘What’s up? Shut the door and have a seat.’

The chandler plonked down into a wooden, swivel chair beside a roll-top desk.

All the way up Chaloner Street, Manuel had rehearsed what he was going to say. Now the words tumbled out breathlessly. ‘I’ve got to leave school at the end of term, Sir, because Mam can’t afford to keep me any more – I’ll be fourteen in September – and I was wanting your advice,
Sir, about going to sea. A friend of mine suggested I should get in with a steward, who might give me a chance. And I thought that, one day, maybe, I could be a steward myself.’ He paused to take breath and to glance up at Mr Ganivet.

With a pencil Mr Ganivet was tracing circles round the edge of an invoice, so Manuel continued. He had been speaking in Basque, feeling that this made a connection between himself and the man at the desk. He now said, ‘I remembered that you did business with stewards and cooks and people, and I wondered if you could recommend me to someone?’

He had hung his head as he spoke, fearing a quick dismissal, and all Mr Ganivet could see was the smooth dark crown of his head. ‘As a pantry boy,’ he finished hopefully.

‘Humph.’ Mr Ganivet fiddled with his pencil. Then he heaved a big sigh, which made his waistcoat, with its gold watch chain hung with seals, rise and fall like a slow wave on the Mersey. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I had hoped to see you go to university with Arnador. I believe that’s what your dad hoped for you?’

‘He never said anything to me, Sir, except that he wanted me in school until I was sixteen, but it’s impossible; he’s not here any more – and neither is my granddad.’ The boy raised his head, and Mr Ganivet surveyed the long gaunt face with its flat cheekbones, the wide quirky mouth and rather deep-set brown eyes. A fine face, the chandler thought, almost that of a grown man; but no sign of a beard yet. He felt uneasy about what might happen to such a fine-looking boy on a long sea voyage, if he were not under the close supervision of a more senior crew member. It would not do for him to sign on without a family man to keep an eye on him, he decided.

The silence between them deepened. It was finally broken by Manuel, who said shyly, ‘I want to thank you, Sir, for helping to keep me at school since Dad died – Mother
told me about it yesterday. It was very kind of you, Sir, and I really don’t have any right to ask you for more help – but I don’t know which way to turn.’

Mr Ganivet responded to the boy’s thanks with a little smile, and then asked, ‘Do you want to go to sea?’

Manuel was surprised by the question. ‘Never thought of doing anything else, Sir. All our family went to sea.’

Mr Ganivet nodded. The boy had obviously never had the advantages of advanced education pointed out to him; perhaps, in the circumstances, it was as well.

He put down his pencil, and said, ‘You were welcome to the small help with your schooling; I would’ve liked to continue it – but I have to prepare for Arnador’s going to university – and I can’t do both.’

‘It’s not expected, Sir.’

Mr Gavinet ignored the interruption, and went on, ‘I can imagine the difficulties of your mother, and the need for you to earn. And, of course, at sea you would be fed, which would ease her burden. Of course, you’d have to pay for your kit.’

There was a knock on the office door, and the bald man in the beige jacket entered. ‘The cordage has just come in, Sir,’ he told Mr Ganivet nervously.

‘Well, fill Ellerman’s order. Send it in the big lorry – they’re waiting on it. And hurry, man. Hurry!’

‘Yes, Sir. Of course, Sir.’

The door clicked shut, and the chandler turned back to Manuel. ‘Get me a written recommendation from your headmaster and bring it to me. Meanwhile, I’ll see what I can do. I can’t make any promises, and it may not be in catering.’ He got up from his chair, to indicate the end of the interview. ‘I’m not sure what I can do for you, so be thinking what else you might do.’

Manuel got up. He smiled, and said with enthusiasm, ‘Thank you, Sir. I’m very grateful.’

As they walked together to the door, Mr Ganivet smiled
back, and ruffled the boy’s hair. He wished that Arnador had something of his friend’s warmth of character.

A week after Micaela’s visit to her to borrow two shillings, Claire walked down to Wapping to see Micaela. The streets she traversed seemed smaller and meaner than they used to be when she had lived there with her first husband. The pavements were more littered, and the noise and foul odours from the factories and workshops were more intense.

As she knocked on the open door and a flustered Micaela called to her to enter, her heart sank. The house stank as it never had done in earlier years, the hallway blackened with soot from coal fires and tobacco smoke. She walked determinedly in, however, to find Micaela lying on a sofa in a muddled kitchen by an empty fireplace.

She laughed at Micaela’s distress at not being able to offer her even a cup of tea, and said she had just dropped by for a moment to offer Manuel a part-time job.

She had squeezed out of Ould Biggs a Saturday morning’s employment cleaning out the stables – their present man was getting old – and occasional help with putting the horse to and other odd jobs in connection with the bigger funerals, like polishing the hearse and the carriages.

Micaela jumped at it, with the thought that the boy’s first wages – sixpence an hour – must go to paying back the two shillings she owed Claire.

So after Manuel had done his early-morning paper round and had had his breakfast, he went once a week to help Ould Biggs, who found him very useful, and sent for him several times during the weeks that Manuel was looking for regular work, to help with funeral processions.

Claire always gave him a huge mug of cocoa and a thick slice of bread and butter; and he would stand in the yard and gratefully consume these delicacies.

Sometimes, he would dream of a time when he would be able to keep some of the money he earned – and take Mary Connolly to a music hall matinée – and buy his mother and Bridget Connolly pretty quarter-pound boxes of chocolates.

If it had not been for the Second World War, when she joined the Forces and met a Polish soldier who married her, I might have married Mary myself, considered Old Manuel. She’d have made a good wife for a seaman. As he considered whether he should mention, in his notes for Lorilyn, the upheavals of the civilian population during the war, he was very slowly digging over his vegetable patch; the soil was waterlogged and heavy.

He paused to lean on his spade and catch his breath; digging was difficult. Next year he would get a man to do it for him. He smiled grimly to himself – perhaps he should say, if he were here next year, he would do so. He felt that time was running out, like water dripping from a leaky tank, drop by drop. Maybe he should visit Ramon and Arnador in Liverpool this year – and after a rest there, go on to Vizcaya; it would be wonderful to see the Pyrenees again.

In the midst of his meditations, he was surprised when Sharon Herman came quickly round the side of his bungalow.

‘Hi!’ she greeted him cheerfully. ‘I came to collect some stuff from Veronica’s house, but she isn’t home – so I thought I’d pop in to see how you are.’

Old Manuel grinned at her. ‘Fine,’ he assured her. He pushed his spade into the loam, so that it would stand upright, and said, ‘Come in. It’s getting chilly out here.’

Over a glass of wine, she thanked him for a piece of fish he had left for her with one of her new neighbours in the apartment block. He smiled and shrugged. ‘It’s nothin’,’ he said.

Sharon’s eyes wandered round the sitting-room, while she considered what she should say next, and came to rest on a beautifully cased sewing machine, and she wondered about the woman who had sat at it, or had sat in the bay window to hand sew in a good light.

‘Do you have any kids?’ she asked him suddenly. ‘Besides Faith – you mentioned her once, I think.’

The question was a personal one, and he sipped his wine, while he thought how to answer her. Then he grinned. ‘Only Faith – and I don’t suppose she wants to be regarded as a kid. She’s forty-six. I’ve got a granddaughter, though – she’s going to be an electrical engineer, she tells me. She’s at the University of British Columbia.’ Pride in Lorilyn made him more talkative, and he took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. Then, remembering that Sharon might smoke, he proffered her the packet. ‘Seems as if girls has gone off nursing or teaching.’

Sharon refused the cigarette, and endured, with amusement, the smoke that slowly surrounded them.

He told her that he had decided to go home this summer, and she asked lightly where home was. England or Spain?

He hesitated, and then said, ‘Both, I guess.’

They began to talk about a trip he and Kathleen had done the year before she was taken ill, and as he described it he grew slower.

He’s tired, thought Sharon guiltily. I should not have come; and yet she did not want to stop his talking. As far as she knew, he had nobody to talk to.

He rubbed his eyes, and she was distressed to see that they were filled with tears. His chin trembled, and he hastily pulled a Kleenex from a decorated box on the table beside him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘It takes me back a bit, talkin’, like.’

She crossed over to sit by him on the settee, and put her arm round the bent, thin shoulders. He did not brush her off, but wept quietly into a bunch of paper handkerchiefs.

She felt a great, unreasonable anger that his daughter was not by him – or even his clever granddaughter. Such grief should have been allowed to express itself long ago. She tightened her hold on him, and he tried to control the explosion. But he could not.

‘Just cry,’ she said very gently. ‘I do understand about these things.’

Families don’t have the experience of dealing with bereavement, she thought, trying to drown her sense that his family should have helped him more. Death isn’t all round them like it used to be – or like it is with me. They have no experience to draw on.

She held him quietly, gently rubbing his back with her arm, as if he were a sick animal, until finally he drew a big sobbing breath, and said, ‘I’m proper sorry. I don’t know what came over me.’

As he leaned forward to pull some more handkerchiefs from the box, she let him go, and he added, ‘When I were a little kid, people died all round you; you accepted it. I should have got used to it.’ He shoved the damp handkerchiefs into his shirt pocket, and then went on, ‘Doctors was different, though, in them days. They knew you – they came to your house; and I’m dead sure they helped those in pain go more quickly. And then they stayed a while, to comfort the family like, and the neighbours came in and out to see you was all right. And the priests were there …’ He cleared his throat, and said in a less wistful voice, ‘If you had to manage without a doctor, there was always neighbours to help – like Bridget – I think I once told you about her.’