The Liverpool Basque (15 page)

Guy Fawkes Night did not turn out at all as Manuel had expected.

Pat Connolly built one of his perfect bonfires and lit it. To the pleasure of the small crowd which had gathered to watch, the fireworks all went off with appropriate bangs and whooshes. The potatoes had been roasted to blackness on the outside and steamy perfection inside. But a thoroughly frightened Manuel had clutched Jean Baptiste Saitua’s hand, and had, at first, even refused to put a match to his own bangers.

He was obsessed by the nightmare scene he had witnessed at home, immediately before Jean Baptiste had whipped him away to join Pat Connolly.

Aunt Maria had begun to moan, saying that she had a terrible pain in her side. She started to thresh about on the couch; her crochet, her rosary, her smelling salts, her medicines were scattered suddenly from the tiny sidetable; her hot-water bottle and her shawls fell off the couch.

With unusual agility, Grandma had leapt up from her own chair; and his mother, after glancing quickly round, hastily deserted the washing-up, and, as she squeezed round the table, dried her hands on her apron.

‘Give me a towel, quick!’ Grandma shouted to her.

Rosita grabbed the kitchen towel and threw it across the room to her. A paralysed Manuel saw it turn scarlet, as his aunt doubled up and spat blood.

At that moment, Jean Baptiste Saitua and Domingo came through the unlocked front entrance to collect Manuel.

Jean Baptiste gave one horrified glance at Maria, and
said immediately to the boy, ‘Ready to go? Let’s go down to the bonfire.’

Easing her way round the furniture towards Maria, Rosita said quickly, ‘Yes, luv. Away you go. We’ll look after Auntie.’ She added softly to Jean, ‘Ask Bridget to come quick and Madeleine.’

Though filled with dread, Manuel allowed himself to be led away. While he and Jean Baptiste knocked on Bridget’s door, Domingo ran fleetly back to his home to get his mother.

‘What’s to do?’ asked Bridget apprehensively, seeing the child’s white face in the light of the street lamp.

‘It’s Maria. Go quick.’

‘Jesus Mary!’ It was a call she had been dreading, and she fled back to the kitchen to get a clean apron.

Manuel silently walked down to the corner of Corn Hill. He was afraid to ask the big Basque what was happening to Auntie Maria, because he dreaded an honest answer. He had expected that his grandmother and mother would come to join in the fun; but he realized now that they must look to his aunt’s needs. He hoped that her Guardian Angel was on the watch and doing better than Grandpa’s had.

Persuaded by Pat Connolly, he obediently carried bits of wood and rubbish from a niche, in which it had been hidden by the boys, to the bonfire to keep it blazing.

Pat had stored the fireworks on top of a wall, well back from the fire, and young Vicente Saitua had been stationed near them to guard them from thieves.

Even the excitement of the rockets sparkling in the cold November sky failed to divert Manuel completely. He kept glancing over his shoulder and wondering if he dare run back home.

Jean Baptiste was well aware of what was probably going on in the Barinètas’ home; his wife had sent back a message with his son that on no account must Manuel be allowed to go home.

Instructed by his mother, Domingo asked Manuel casually, ‘Where’s little Frannie?’ and was much relieved to hear that she went to bed early.

‘Me mam said she was too small and would be afraid of the noise,’ Manuel explained.

‘Oh, aye,’ agreed Domingo. ‘This is fun for big lads, like us, int it?’ and this had coaxed a faint smile out of the frightened child.

Though they did all they could to make a happy evening for the children, both Pat and Jean Baptiste were heavy-hearted. Consumption was a wicked disease, and you never knew who would be struck by it next. The Basque families, better fed and slightly better housed than most people in the dock area, had no other case that he was aware of. But even the rich feared it, particularly amongst their women and children.

‘It’s rough on old Mrs Barinèta,’ said Pat, under his breath to Jean Baptiste, as he heaved some stringed bundles of newspaper into the flames. ‘The wife says she hasn’t got over losing her hubbie yet.’

‘Will they call the doctor?’

‘I doubt it,’ replied Pat. ‘He can’t do nothing for her. It’d be more expense for the family, and wouldn’t do no good. He might put her in hospital. They wouldn’t want her to die there.’

‘They’ll have to get him for the Death Certificate, won’t they?’

‘They’ll worry about that later. Bridget’ll help them as much as she can.’

‘Oh, aye. And our Madeleine, too. Better to die in your mother’s arms, with friends round you.’ Jean Baptiste stepped back from the bonfire, to join Domingo and Manuel.

‘Come on, Mannie,’ he said kindly. ‘I’m going to send a rocket up specially for you.’ He took the long-stemmed firework from the top of the wall, and squatted down, to
put it into the long neck of a beer bottle as straight as he could make it stand. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘if you set it like that and put a match to it carefully, it’ll go straight up into the air – and not into somebody’s bedroom window!’ He struck a match and handed it to Manuel. ‘Now, you light the fuse, here.’

They were surrounded by a small squad of slightly older boys, who said they remembered other Guy Fawkes Nights, when rockets fizzled and then seemed to go out, only to suddenly take flight dangerously close to the faces of all of them. As Manuel put the match to the fuse, they all seemed to yelp together, ‘Nearly took me ear, it did.’

Manuel wanted to back quickly away, but he was hemmed in by the boys’ big boots round him. The rocket, however, after a preliminary spit, soared upwards, leaving a stream of red and green stars after it. It did a splendid arc, and the onlookers let out a collective exclamation.

Manuel was impressed. He watched the firework until the last green star died in Liverpool’s overwhelming smog, and Jean Baptiste smiled down at him, and said cheerily, ‘That was the best rocket I’ve seen in a long time. You must’ve lit it exactly right.’

He was relieved when the lad looked up and grinned at him.

Pat Connolly had been watching the potatoes bake in the ashes, turning them occasionally with a spade. They were now giving out a delicious smell, so he pushed them out of the fire and lifted them to the edge of the pavement to cool.

Manuel was suddenly very hungry, and Pat Connolly chose a particularly big one and split it open with his penknife. ‘Got a hanky?’ he asked.

Manuel quickly produced a grubby piece of rag from his pocket, and the potato was carefully laid on it; a welcome heat from it permeated to his hand. Everybody wanted a
potato, but Pat was careful to give them only to his own little party.

With shrieks and squeaks at the heat, the potatoes were slowly eaten with the fingers. Manuel ate all the soft inside of his potato and threw the blackened crust into the fire; but Brian Wing ate every scrap, his chubby face getting liberally blackened by the potato’s well-burned skin.

Then the Catherine wheels were, one by one, nailed to a warehouse door. When lit, they whirled out a huge circle of sparks, and the children danced back from them to avoid being burned. An older boy set off a couple of bangers amid the long-skirted women who had come to see the bonfire. The jokes became raucous, as the women lifted their skirts and petticoats, for fear of their catching fire. Some of them ran up nearby steps, exhibiting black woollen stockings and bare thighs. In the light of the glowing ashes, with their long shadows dancing on the brick walls of a factory, they looked to Manuel like real witches.

The party was being taken over by grown-ups. Brian’s big brother was the first to realize it, and politely and discreetly began to withdraw with Brian. Brian protested loudly and tried to kick his patient brother. Pat and Jean Baptiste nodded to each other, and Pat took the hand of a sleepy Joey. He turned to his young daughter, Mary, now a skinny eight-year-old, and ordered, ‘Our Mary, you take Manuel’s hand. He’s coming to our house tonight. His auntie isn’t feeling too clever, and we don’t want to wake her up with him coming home, and all.’

Mary nodded. ‘Give me your hand, Mannie,’ she said; she was used to being the big sister in charge of a small brother.

He backed away from her. His face was covered with smuts and he looked as if he were about to cry. ‘No! I want to go home,’ he whined. Then, more hysterically, he wailed, ‘I want me mam.’

Jean Baptiste swept him up into his arms, and told him
peremptorily, ‘Your mam wants you to stay with Mary tonight. Now stop crying – you’re a big boy now.’

Jean Baptiste’s red face looked like carved granite under his black beret. He had spoken crisply in Basque, exactly like Grandpa used to when he was cross.

Manuel’s wails became a subdued snuffle.

Trotting along slightly behind Mr Saitua, Mary looked up at the unhappy face peering down at her over the big Basque’s shoulder. ‘Mam’s making hot cocoa for us when we come in,’ she promised.

She did not know what was happening in the Barinèta household, except that it had been obvious to her at the bonfire that something was wrong, because Rosita had not joined them. She had, however, already learned from her mother to protect Joey from some of the hard facts of the raw life around him; and now she was doing her small best for Manuel, despite her own nervousness that her mother might not be at home.

She smiled up at him and wrinkled up her nose. He smiled wanly back and stuck his finger in his mouth. He liked Mary.

Auntie Bridget was not at home, so Mary carefully made cocoa for them all, and they drank it while sitting on the rag hearth rug before the dying fire. Then Mary took them upstairs, ordered them to take off their outer clothes, while she took off her own dress and stockings. She then put Joey and Manuel into a double bed and climbed in after them. After a few minutes of pushing and shoving, they settled down to sleep, and the next thing that Manuel knew was Auntie Bridget’s smiling face, as she shook each of them and told them to hurry up or they’d be late for school.

Downstairs, a bowl of porridge with a little sugar and milk awaited them. Pat Connolly had already gone to work; his empty porridge plate still lay on the table.

Though Bridget Connolly had been up all night and was so tired she felt fit to drop, she sent the children off with a pat on each small behind, and the injunction to Manuel that she was sending them off a bit early, so that he could pop in and see his mam.

A tide of relief went through Manuel. He had a wild hope that everything at home would be all right. Auntie Maria would smile at him from the old horsehair sofa; Grandma would be washing the breakfast plates in the chipped enamel basin in the sink, and his mother would probably be making the beds, or perhaps sweeping the staircase with a dustpan and brush.

He pushed open the front door and walked in. The house was deadly quiet. The parlour door was shut.

He peeped into the kitchen. There was no one there,
and the horsehair sofa held neither Auntie Maria nor the rumpled pile of bedding which usually surrounded her. The sight of the exposed black oilcloth of the sofa made him turn white.

‘Ma!’ he shouted shrilly. ‘Mam, I’m home!’

His mother came slowly down the stairs. Her hair was a wild tangle of copper, her face white and haggard, her big blue eyes suddenly sunken and bloodshot. She winced, as she slowly descended.

Manuel stared up at her, and then whispered, ‘Where’s everybody gone, Mam?’

Rosita reached the bottom of the stairs and sat down heavily on the second stair. She ignored Manuel’s question, and pulled him to her. ‘Did you have a good Bonfire Night, darling?’ she inquired, with a forced smile.

His eyes wandered round the gloomy stairwell, as he answered absently, ‘Yes.’

‘Good. Had breakfast?’

His eyes came back to her face. ‘Yes.’

‘It’s chilly this morning. You’d better put your woolly scarf on.’

She felt him tremble in her arms. ‘Ma, where
is
Auntie Maria – and Grandma – and Frannie?’

‘Well, Auntie Peggy O’Brien invited Frannie to play with her little Theresa, so Effie took her round the corner earlier on. And now Grandma and Effie –’ She paused to sigh heavily. ‘Well, they’re in the parlour.’

Manuel glanced fearfully over his shoulder at the closed parlour door, and then looked back at his dishevelled mother. ‘Is Auntie Maria there, as well?’

He had never seen his mother look so ill, and, as tears welled out of her bloodshot eyes, he was appalled.

‘Mam,’ he whispered. ‘Oh, Mam!’

They had been speaking in Basque, and their close communion was made more intense by their own language.

‘She’s gone to Heaven, lovey.’ Rosita wept uncontrollably
into her son’s serge jacket, the horrors of the night still too close.

Manuel was engulfed by such primeval fear as he was not to know again for many years; the understanding of the remorseless inevitability of death was lodged in his mind for ever. It appeared to him to be an awful monster waiting to gobble up anyone whom one loved. Creepy-crawlies seemed to be climbing up his back, and his hair rose, like Pudding’s did when an alien cat intruded.

If Auntie Maria was lying dead in the parlour, how long would it be before his mother lay there – and Grandma? His mother looked as ill as Auntie Maria had done. If they both went, Frannie and he would be alone; in his consternation, he forgot his patient father, at that moment still chugging slowly across the Atlantic.

He clutched his mother tightly round her neck and felt her curls damp against his wrist.

Rosita raised her head and pushed her hair away from her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, dearest. Auntie Maria was mother’s big sister – and I’ll miss her.’ She again put her arms round her clinging son – she was so heavy with child that he could not sit on her lap, though he wanted to.

‘I love you, Mam – and I love Auntie Maria,’ he said softly.

She made a valiant effort to pull herself together, despite her enormous fatigue. She pushed him a little away from her, and said quite briskly, ‘I love you, too – my big boy. Now, I don’t want you to be too sad about Auntie Maria. You know she had a dreadful cough – and it hurt her a lot. Sometimes she would ask God to take her to Him, so that she wouldn’t have any more pain.’ She gave another shivering sigh. ‘And now he’s done it. And Father Felipe told her that everything would be all right – he was here last night – and he said that she was such a good woman that she would be happy with God.’ She tried to smile. ‘But we’ll miss her, won’t we?’

Her last words became part of an involuntary whimper, and she suddenly clutched Manuel very tightly.

‘Mam! Are you hurting?’

His mother was biting her lower lip, as a long, slow roll of aching pain ran round her waist. Manuel was near to fainting with fright.

She saw his expression, and, as the pain softened, she laughed ruefully. ‘It’s nothing really, pet. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you got a new brother or sister today. Now then, you’re not to worry – it’s perfectly normal. When you go out, just run back to Auntie Bridget, and ask her to step in. You may have to go to Mrs O’Brien’s for your midday dinner – but don’t worry.’

Reluctantly he let go of her and pulled his woolly scarf from the peg in the hall, and wound it round his neck. As he opened the front door, he looked back at her, and saw that she was rubbing her back and her eyes were closed, her jaw set grimly. He wondered how he was going to make himself walk to school.

His mother was silently saying a Hail Mary, as she rubbed her back, and worrying about how to pay Bridget for two calls in less than twenty-four hours. She didn’t charge much, but, in addition, Rosita felt she should send a decently big casserole over to Peggy O’Brien in thanks for her help. Normally, she considered frantically, Micaela and she herself could have managed a birth together. But Micaela was weeping her heart out on her bed. And to send for the only alternatives, a professional midwife or the doctor, was too expensive to consider.

Whether she was paid or not, Bridget would come, she was sure; they had been friends for years. But Bridget had to augment Pat’s wages somehow.

Rosita held her head in her hands, as she crouched on the stairs, and cried for Micaela, for Maria – and for herself. Then she suddenly lifted her head, arched her back and moaned. Effie heard her and came running down the
stairs, and Rosita accepted her help to get up to her bedroom. She feared to ask Effie to help with the birth, in case the tiny woman lost her nerve in the middle of the delivery – and Effie probably did not know about how clean a midwife must keep her hands – childbed fever, Rosita knew from her reading, travelled from mother to mother via the midwife – and it was deadly.

Perplexed and frightened, Manuel nearly fell over Mary, as he took the two hollowed-out steps in one careless bound on his way to school after leaving his mother.

He paused in surprise, and said, ‘I thought you’d gone with Joey.’ She looked pinched and cold, though she had a tam o’shanter on her head and was encased in a shabby black coat too big for her.

She scuffed one small boot against the other, and said, ‘Mam said to walk with yez.’

‘I’ve got to ask her to go in to me mam for a minute.’ He ran up Bridget’s steps, pushed open the door, and shouted down the passage, ‘Auntie Bridget, me mam wants you.’

Bridget Connolly had just gone upstairs to lie down for half an hour, before starting her housework. She swung her stockinged feet to the floor, and went to the top of the stairs, ‘What’s up, Mannie?’

‘Mam says it’s the baby.’

‘Mother of God! At seven months?’ Bridget muttered, and then shouted back, ‘I’ll be there in a minute or two. Now you get to school. Hurry – you’re late.’

Little Maria, as she was called all her life, not only because she was small of stature but also to differentiate her from her Auntie Maria who was with God, was born that evening. Peggy O’Brien resignedly fed Mary, Joey and Manuel with thick slices of bread and margarine and bowls of vegetable soup at lunchtime, and more bread and margarine, with tea to drink, at teatime. She hoped that Bridget
would share with her a bit of the fee she would get for the delivery; otherwise, so tight was her housekeeping, she would not be able to feed her own three children and hungry husband the following day. Yet, it never occurred to her not to help Rosita and Bridget; she knew they would be among the first to come to her when her next baby was on the way.

Late in the evening, when Peggy was beginning to feel harassed to death with so many children in her kitchen, and a very tired husband grumbling amid them, Pat Connolly came to take them home.

In answer to a question from Manuel, he told him that the baby had arrived safely; and, to the boy’s relief, he was delivered to his own doorstep. He was met by a grave wraith of a grandma, who silently hugged both him and his sister tightly, before leading them upstairs to see their mother.

She was lying quietly in her own bed, looking very tired and white. Though her eyes had large black rings round them, he was thankful to see that she was not crying. A big woman in black was putting more coal on the bedroom fire. She half-turned to smile at the children. Francesca ignored her and toddled straight over to the bed. Manuel paused to stare back at her. He knew where she lived, but he did not know that she was a more experienced midwife, whom Bridget had sent for, because the baby had presented herself upside down.

As the boy moved towards Rosita, Francesca demanded to be lifted on to the bed. Laughing, Bridget laid her carefully beside her mother, where, from under the quilt, she eyed Manuel triumphantly at being allowed to be there, while he was not.

Though so young, Francesca had been acutely aware that something was terribly wrong in her small world, and she had objected strongly when she had been taken straight from her bed into Effie’s room, to be hastily dressed and
fed with bread and milk before being taken to Peggy’s house. She had howled like a banshee as Effie pushed her doggedly in her pushchair, though she had recovered somewhat after she had been with Peggy to the corner shop to spend a halfpenny, provided by Effie, on an ounce of dolly mixtures. Now, with her mother’s arm curved protectively around her, she felt safe once more.

To Manuel, the bedroom smelled peculiar – faintly like a meat stall in the market. As he bumped against the bed, his mother smiled sleepily at him, and asked if everything had gone well at school and whether Peggy had given Francesca and him some tea.

‘Yes,’ he replied, and she stroked his head and smiled again. Then she said, ‘Go and look in the drawer over there. You and Frannie have a baby sister.’

Obediently, he went towards the fire, which the midwife was now poking into a blaze. In front of it, set on two straight chairs was a drawer taken from the big dresser in the upper hallway. Exactly like Grandpa’s coffin, he thought with a burst of fear. In the drawer, however, was a bundle no bigger than Mary Connolly’s doll. A shawl that Auntie Maria had crocheted was wrapped round it, so that only a wizened red face was visible. A tiny tongue licked perfectly formed lips, and the closed eyelids looked like the small pink shells he had once picked up on New Brighton beach.

He turned to Rosita. ‘What’s its name?’

It was Grandma who interjected immediately: ‘Maria, of course, after your auntie.’ Her shrivelled brown hands were clenched in front of her, and Manuel sensed, nervously, how distressed she was beneath her calm exterior.

‘Of course,’ agreed Rosita immediately. ‘Little Maria. Now you go downstairs with your granny, and then you must go to bed.’

He was astonished when his grandmother picked him
up, to hold him to her and to give him an unexpected kiss. Micaela had, for some time, been telling him that he was too big a lad to be picked up or sat on her knee. Her red-rimmed eyes suddenly twinkled close to his. ‘Now you’ve got another person to add to your prayers,’ she said, as she put him down. ‘You run downstairs, while I put Frannie into her own bed. I’ll be down in a moment.’

Because the damp winds of winter were making the old house cold, Grandma collected his nightshirt from Auntie Maria’s bedroom. She brought it downstairs to the kitchen-living-room and put it on the oven door to warm, together with the kitchen towel. Then she brought the enamel basin from the sink and filled it with warm water from the oven tap. She set the bowl on a wooden chair beside the fire. In the warm glow, he stripped and washed himself, while she made cups of cocoa for both of them. Afterwards, they sat knee to knee, he with her shawl over his shoulders to keep him warm, while they drank their cocoa together.

Looking back, Old Manuel, snug in his Victoria bungalow which boasted a fine warm bathroom, as well as a cloakroom, could not imagine sitting in its glossy pinkness to drink cocoa, in close communion with a loving grandmother, his cotton nightshirt so hot on his back that he could hardly bear the first touch of it. He had never seen Lorilyn being bathed when she was a child – or Faith, for that matter. Perhaps it was because he had been away so much – or, perhaps, an innate prissiness of Kathleen’s.