The Liverpool Basque (30 page)

The coming of Ramon had already begun to alter their lives. In her heart, Rosita feared the little lad would soon be motherless, and she knew that, at a stage in her life when she needed the most peace because her menopause was upon her, she was going to have to bring him up. She had no idea how she was going to do it.

There were no sulpha drugs in those days to save Carmela from a dreadful death, thought Old Manuel sadly. By the time she had medical attention, she was in a shocking state. Twenty-four hours after her arrival in Liverpool, she died of septicaemia.

Because Quanito was penniless, her funeral expenses were paid from Rosita’s and Leo’s bank account. Later, proud Quanito’s fishing smack was auctioned to pay the dues incurred by its presence in the Mersey river. He insisted upon giving Rosita the balance of the money raised by the auction, in part payment of the funeral costs.

Immediately after his wife’s death, he nearly went mad. For hour after hour he raved of vengeance, vengeance on Franco and his Spaniards and on his German allies. He swore by Almighty God that he would make them pay for the death of Carmela and their beautiful sons and for his entire family. Again and again, he swore it aloud.

On that awful evening, Manuel and Arnador finally made him so drunk that he did not come round for thirty-six hours. When he did regain his senses, he was deadly quiet. He sat with a fretful Ramon on his knee, frozen with grief.

Rosita, almost constantly in tears herself, fluttered round him, trying to comfort him with food and with tender promises to be a mother to his small boy – though God only knows how, she thought to herself. There was room in her small home to house both father and child, if the British would allow them to stay in Liverpool, she assured him.

As refugees, Quanito and Ramon were reluctantly allowed to stay temporarily in Liverpool; and, when Manuel, Leo and Quanito happened to be in port at the same time, the back bedroom was rather crowded. Ramon was comforted by his truckle bed being pushed close to Rosita’s, and he was spoiled to death by Francesca and Maria, as well as Rosita. He thrived on it.

Until the Spanish War was over, Quanito found a berth with a small Basque shipping company sailing out of Liverpool to the West Indies. After the vicious conflict was ended early in 1939, Quanito applied for British citizenship; but he had not been in the country sufficiently long to be considered for it. He was, however, given permission to reside with his son in Liverpool. He thankfully accepted this.

When travel was possible, he went back to Bilbao to see if his home still stood. He left Ramon with Rosita, and crossed the English Channel by ferry and went by train to his home city.

Rosita received a postcard to say that he had been to see his old home, but it had been pulled down as unsafe and was now a heap of rubble surrounded by a temporary fence.

After that, he vanished and Rosita never heard directly from him again.

From time to time, a shy Basque seaman, carrying a verbal message, would arrive on the Echaniz doorstep. He was always invited in, fed and plied with wine. Then the news was whispered to them.

Quanito was up in the mountains with the Basque Separatists, who were fighting for a country of their own. They had blown up the car of a Spanish general – with the general inside it. They constantly harried Spanish businessmen until, in fear of their lives, they left Basque cities. They picked off informers and any Spaniard unlucky enough to come within the sights of their guns. They had
had to bury some of their own men and some were in prison – but not Quanito, who, though very daring, was also very smart, the seamen said.

Rosita wrung her hands. ‘When are they going to stop?’ she asked an older man, who was one of the messengers.

‘When we have a country of our own,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘When we’ve seen their cities burn, as ours did. Who’s going to accept Spanish rule, after all we’ve been through? We’ll never give up.’

Each night visitor brought a small sum of money for the maintenance of Ramon. Rosita accepted it and banked it for the child; none of the family inquired from what source Quanito had acquired it. Rosita asked Manuel or Leo to change the foreign currency, since seamen often had such money to change, and the transaction would not cause so much comment as it might have done if a woman undertook it.

Even after the commencement of the Second World War, Quanito did not forget them, and money continued to arrive. Rosita took to writing anonymous small notes to her nephew, saying that Ramon was thriving. She asked the messengers to pass them on, if they had the opportunity. She never knew whether Quanito received them.

Encouraged and cosseted by three women and two men, the boy knew little about his parentage until he was about ten. In the meantime, he was simply told that they had died in the Spanish War. As far as he was concerned, Rosita was his mother and Uncle Leo was cast as father. Manuel was the big brother who played endlessly with him, when he was home, and brought him presents from foreign places.

Ramon’s lack of a birth certificate worried both Leo and Rosita. They tried to adopt him, since he was their grand-nephew; his mother was dead and his father, they told the authorities, had deserted him.

They were immediately caught in floundering red tape. First, the Spanish Government and the Spanish Roman Catholic Church were anxious for all refugees to return to Spain, and Ramon and his father were refugees; the fascists felt it was insulting that many Basques did not wish to return to live under their oppressive regime. Second, the would-be parents were brother and sister, not husband and wife – it was, therefore, an unstable home declared the British, and, even if the child was an orphan, it was not wise to place him in it.

Patient Leo said angrily to Manuel, one day, that he wanted to scream at the woman dealing with the case. When he heard this, Arnador gave them the name of a good solicitor. Quite a lot of their precious savings were expended on his fees.

It took time, but the solicitor proved his worth. Ramon got official permission to reside permanently in the country and to apply for citizenship when he was aged twenty-one. Meanwhile, Rosita and Leo were declared his official guardians. It was not what his elders had wanted – but it worked.

Perhaps it was as well that Ramon’s situation had been formalized, because eighteen months after the Second World War broke out his wrathful father became internationally famous. Still an ardent Separatist, he travelled secretly to Madrid, and neatly shot dead two German diplomats visiting their fascist allies. It was the first of a number of German assassinations carried out by an unidentified crack shot, believed to be a Basque, until, in Argentina, he missed his target and, unintentionally, killed an eminent Argentinian. Cornered on a roof top by the Buenos Aires police, he must have decided that this was the end, because, rather than be captured, he shot himself.

Long in their graves, his father and mother, his extended
family, and his beloved Carmela and their sons had been methodically revenged. Few Basques grudged him such a reprisal.

It was obvious to Rosita that she could no longer work full-time at Sloan’s, now that she had Ramon to care for, so she begged an interview with her old mentor, Miss Muriel Hamilton, and explained the situation to her.

‘I need to work,’ she explained, ‘and I love working for Sloan’s. But now I’ve got young Ramon …’

Rosita’s exquisite work with a needle was more precious to her employer than she imagined. Younger women coming into the trade were not nearly as well versed as their mothers had been. Miss Hamilton hummed and hawed, and agreed to provide work for her at home. Rosita would not earn nearly as much, but, added to what the rest of the family was bringing in, she knew she could manage.

Neither Miss Hamilton nor Rosita foresaw the havoc that would be wrought in the women’s clothing industry by the war, hovering on the horizon, and the consequent rationing.

Because she was at home more, Rosita began to notice that Maria was being courted by Madeleine Saitua’s younger son, Vicente, and she was very upset about it.

‘You’re too young for him,’ she stormed at her daughter, one night after Ramon had been put to bed. ‘He must be at least fourteen years older than you are. Do you want to be a widow for half your life?’

‘Don’t be silly, Mam. I’m nearly twenty-three. I know what I want.’ Maria fought back stubbornly. ‘He’s always been in work – being a carpenter, he can work ashore or in a ship. What’s the matter with him?’

There was nothing the matter with him, except that he was thirty-seven years old; and Rosita knew it. She had known him for most of his life, and Madeleine Saitua, now a widow, would be a kindly mother-in-law. Sulkily, she returned to a collar she had been embroidering for Sloan’s.

Boiling with rage – and yet made fearful by her mother’s remarks about widowhood – Maria went out to meet her beloved and go to the cinema, before going on nightshift.

Later on, when Francesca returned from a meeting of an amateur dramatic club to which she belonged, she found her mother sitting dejectedly in Grandma Micaela’s rocking chair, the
Liverpool Echo
unopened in her lap.

Aware of how tiring Rosita was finding the care of Ramon, she inquired a little anxiously, ‘Are you feeling poorly, Mam?’ She sat down on a straight chair facing her mother. Rosita thought she had never seen her look more beautiful.

The older woman sighed, and told her about Maria and Vicente.

Francesca laughed. ‘They’ve been going together for over a year now. Didn’t you know?’

Rosita made a face. ‘I suppose I didn’t notice him amongst all her other hangers-on!’ She sounded tart.

‘Come on, Mam. Vicente’s as nice a fellow as you can imagine. He’ll treat her like a princess. Isn’t that better than being misused by a younger, more thoughtless chap?’

‘She says she wants to be engaged. He’s asked her.’

‘Tush, Mam. Let them be. We don’t know what lies ahead of us. It’s better for her to be happy now.’ She took the hat pins out of her hat and laid them on the table, while she removed her hat carefully from her head. ‘Be agreeable to their getting engaged – and see what happens. It may not last.’

‘But, Frannie, when she’s forty-five, he’ll be fifty-nine and close to the end of his life.’

‘That could leave them over twenty years of contented married life!’

Rosita frowned, and then laughed suddenly. ‘You’re wicked girls – you always defend each other! And what about you, young lady? When are you going to get yourself married?’

‘When a nice Basque asks me,’ replied her daughter cheerfully. ‘Maria and I are agreed – we both want Basques for husbands – Grandpa and Daddy were such golden examples, that neither of us can consider anybody less!’

At the mention of Pedro and Juan, her mother smiled at her. Her smile was sweet, and she said, ‘If you do as well as I did, it’ll be good.’

So no more was said to Maria about her choice of Vicente, and within the month she had a modest diamond ring on her finger.

It seemed to Rosita that the family had hardly got its collective life adjusted to their joint sorrows as a result of the Spanish Civil War, when the Second World War was upon them. As Basques, they had a better knowledge of what it might entail than most of the population of Liverpool; and all of them worried about Ramon, who, by the age of approximately two years, had had enough of conflict to last a lifetime.

When war broke out on 3 September 1939 Manuel was nearly thirty-one years of age. Though he was now a refrigeration engineer in ships carrying fruit, and usually had a neat small cabin of his own – which he had promised himself on his very first voyage, he remembered with amusement – he was not paid very well. Like many during the Depression years, he had not thought seriously of marriage, because he, like Leo, had a commitment to help maintain the existing family home; to take a wife and start a new family could cause endless problems. Besides,
Arnador was still single, and free to range with him as a fellow bachelor.

A year older than Manuel, Arnador had at last established himself as a lecturer at the University of Liverpool, after doing post-doctoral work in Manchester. But even university staff were not paid that well, he confided to Manuel.

Manuel was at sea when war was declared, but he docked a couple of weeks later, and came up to Toxteth to see his mother in a brief shore leave. Perhaps because the fright of the declaration of war tended to make some people look around them more and re-evaluate their lives, he noticed how greatly Rosita seemed to have aged; her red mane of hair had grown sandy-looking with the white in it; she was stouter and her movements slower. She greeted him cheerfully, however, with her usual ebullience, and Ramon toddled round after her, chattering all the time – speech which had to be translated for Manuel by his amused great-aunt. ‘He’s trying that hard to talk, bless him,’ she told Manuel.

Manuel’s and Leo’s homecomings did not often coincide, though Leo had been home once since Ramon’s arrival. At that time, he had not seemed to have changed much. He was a bosun and enjoyed his job – he never seemed to change ships. He had gone bald and put on some weight under his navy jersey, and, sometimes by a turn of his head or a hand gesture, he reminded Manuel of Grandfather Juan. He had been badly shaken by the news of the loss of his brother and the Bilbao family, and he had been completely in agreement that Ramon and Quanito should stay with them as long as they wished.

It had been expected that immediately upon the declaration of war, the city would be heavily bombed, and Rosita had received instructions from the newly appointed air raid warden about her being evacuated to the country with
Ramon. If the boy had been at school, he would have gone with his teachers; the schools would be closed.

‘As if I’d leave you to be bombed!’ Rosita said to Francesca and Maria. ‘I’ll make a bed for the little lad under the cellar steps – that’s the safest place in the house, according to the air raid warden. The poor little lamb isn’t going anywhere.’

So Ramon spent most nights, during the years of the war, sleeping soundly under the cellar steps, amid the smell and dust of the coal ration.

The evacuated children drifted back from the country in such numbers that the schools had to be re-opened. In the meantime, Ramon learned how to put on a gas mask.

Men were called up, further disorganizing businesses, which were trying to adjust to producing articles required for war, rather than for peace, amid stiff rationing of resources. Women in factories began to earn very good wages and to find that there was little to spend them on.

Rosita suddenly found she was getting dozens of requests from young women in the immediate vicinity to make dresses for them. Most of the material presented to her was undoubtedly obtained on the black market, but she was also asked to recut dresses bought in second-hand shops or to make blouses out of men’s shirts, skirts out of men’s trousers – as brothers were called up and trustingly left their civilian clothes hanging in the wardrobe at home.

At first she refused, but the young women were prepared to pay so much more than she had ever earned before, that she decided to leave Sloan’s, who were having their own problems, and concentrate on this new, very lucrative business.

In 1940, Ramon was sent to school in nearby Granby Street, and she had more time. Her sewing machine in the front room whirred throughout the war, as she put money away for a better education for Ramon.

The boy grew up to be a typical Liverpool lad, unusual
only in his ability to speak two languages. He played football, and, as he grew bigger, was always importuning for money to go to football matches. He became a sturdy boy with wavy black hair and a fair skin; and he blended into the amorphous mass of the population of the great port. Few would have guessed that his father had been a famous guerrilla, fighting a murderous battle of revenge against the fascists.

On the outbreak of war, Vicente obtained a special licence, and he and Maria were quietly married in St Peter’s Church by an aged and sad Father Felipe. Francesca was the bridesmaid and Domingo Saitua was the best man. White-haired Madeleine Saitua put on a pretty wedding breakfast for them in her house, at which Domingo’s wife and daughter, Rosita and Ramon were the only guests. Manuel and Leo were both at sea. The newly married couple went to live with Madeleine, who said rightly that she had more than enough room in her house.

Three months later, Boot’s regretfully told Francesca that their cosmetic trade would be almost wiped out by the lack of stock; they hoped she could find another post more closely connected with the war effort and would return to them when the conflict was over.

Disconcerted, she discussed with Rosita the idea of volunteering for the Forces. ‘I don’t have any particular skills, Mam. I don’t know what else to do.’

Her mother took off her spectacles and rubbed her eyes. She glanced doubtfully at her beautiful daughter; she did not want the girl in uniform – uniforms were for men. ‘You can speak and write three languages,’ she reminded her.

‘I’ve never found them a commercial asset,’ replied Francesca, with a wry grin.

Rosita picked up a reel of cotton and carefully rewound
a piece of thread on to it – appropriately coloured cottons were beginning to be in short supply. ‘Look, Boot’s have given you two weeks to find another job. Mannie’ll be docking in a few days, and I would like you to discuss it with him before you do anything drastic.’

In the event, it was Arnador who settled the matter with one word. He said, ‘Censorship!’ He and Manuel were of one mind; neither of them wanted Francesca in the Forces, a very common state of mind amongst the male population, when their own sisters were involved!

Encouraged by the young men, she applied to the Censorship Office and was sent to Glasgow. When, on 18 December 1941, the call-up of women was announced, she found, like many others, that she could not change her job without Government permission. She found the work so interesting, however, that she was happy to stay there. ‘And it is vital to the war, Mam,’ she told Rosita.

Similarly, Arnador himself was co-opted by the Government to do highly secret work intercepting and translating radio messages and telephone calls, where his knowledge of Spanish and Basque was invaluable.

Because he was convinced on moral grounds that this was a war which had to be fought, he had on its outbreak volunteered for the Air Force; to his astonishment, he had been turned down because of a partially dislocated shoulder, the result of the bite he had received from a horse, as a boy, an event which he had totally forgotten.

Rosita and Ramon were a comfort to each other, as they took shelter under the cellar steps during air raids, and they gave thanks to God each time Manuel and Leo came home from sea.