The Liverpool Basque (29 page)

He again stopped, and Manuel thought he was going to cry. But instead he sighed and turned to face Manuel. He said brokenly, ‘Father and mother – your aunt and Uncle Agustin – and my younger brother; Great-uncle Barinèta and our two cousins – three old people – all of them died in the ruins made by one bomb. I couldn’t believe the wreckage when I saw it. We lived in the next street, and when I heard the crash, I ran through the raid to see if they were all right. The neighbours came, and we all worked like demons trying to get them out. Then the broken wall of a
warehouse at the back of them teetered. We ran for it – and down it came. And that was that.’ He looked down at his torn, filthy clothing. ‘I’ve never had a chance to change my clothes since it happened.’

Manuel shivered. ‘My God!’ he muttered.

Quanito cleared his throat. ‘That’s not all of it. You know I had two other boys older than Ramon?’

Manuel did not know. He said apprehensively, ‘Did you?’

‘Yes. When the raid seemed over, they wanted to play in our street – they were tired of hours of being in the cellar. So the wife let them out to play by the doorstep.’

‘Not them, too?’ Manuel whispered in horror.

‘Yes. Out of nowhere, a plane suddenly dived, and machine-gunned the street. Took my boys and two of a neighbour’s. We buried them together in an old churchyard nearby – it was the only place we could dig in. My lads were only three – twins. Then, on the way back to our house, they began to shell us.’

‘Was that how Carmela got hurt?’

He nodded. ‘We started to run for home, and a piece of shrapnel hit her. Took that whole chunk out of the side of her face. I got her home – but she was in agony. So we laid her in the cellar, and the other couple stayed with her and Ramon. I ran like mad for the nearest doctor – and his house was flat! I was nearly out of my mind. I thought, I’ll never be able to get her to a hospital, with all hell let loose – and she so badly hurt.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I went back home. And then the idea came to me, to try to get down the river and over to England – to you people – because we lived right by the river – in the Old Town.

‘As soon as it was quiet again, my friend and I put what food and water we had into my boat. We brought two
lodgers living with my neighbours with us. Between us, we bandaged Carmela and carried her down. And we came out by night – without lights, though a lot of fires tended to light up the water. I began to think we’d never make it.’

‘It must have been terrifying.’

‘It was – especially for Carmela, particularly when her mouth swelled up. She couldn’t even bear to cry.’

Manuel shivered. These things didn’t happen to you or your family, did they? The newspapers didn’t tell you about people like Quanito; so you imagined that they must be managing through the reported battles. He said nervously, ‘Mother wrote to Uncle Agustin – your father – a couple of months ago suggesting he should bring the family to Liverpool.’

‘I know – but we didn’t seriously think that Bilbao would fall. It’s a fortress of a place – but we didn’t count on German bombers and long-range cannon.’

In the bleak hospital waiting room, the two men had almost given up hope of hearing anything about Carmela. Even the supercilious woman at the desk on the far side of the room had departed, turning out most of the lights. Then the door opened and the nursing sister hurried across the empty room. She was wearing her cloak, as if ready to go home.

She said quickly to them, ‘Mrs er – Barin – what is it? Your wife has been put under sedation and is comfortable. You may come in tomorrow to see how she is.’

Quanito watched the faces of the other two, and saw from Manuel’s expression that all was not well. His face darkened under its coat of dirt, and he asked anxiously for a translation, as the nurse began to move away. Afraid Quanito might make a fuss, Manuel hastily thanked the sister and told Quanito that the nurse had done her best. As they moved out of the hospital after her, he gave a fuller translation, and Quanito shook his clenched fist at the
black stone frontage of the hospital. ‘She’s my
wife
,’ he hissed at Manuel. ‘Surely I can see her?’

Manuel did his best to comfort the man. He said, ‘She’ll be sound asleep under sedation, and the doctor will probably have her in surgery, as soon as she’s a bit rested.’

Quanito bowed his head and accepted what he did not seem to have the power to change, and Manuel took him home by tram. The few passengers stared at such a wreck of a man accompanied by a young man decently clad in a tweed jacket and grey trousers.

At home, a startled Rosita had been faced with Maria standing in the doorway, looking for her, while she rocked a grubby, dozing child in her arms.

‘Good gracious, luv! Who’ve you got there?’ Rosita exclaimed, as Maria turned back into the hall so that she could enter.

Maria babbled out the story of the day, while a work-weary Rosita took off her hat and coat and hung them up. Then she peeped at the tear-stained little face against Maria’s breast, and exclaimed, ‘Poor little lamb. Maybe he’d sleep for a while, if we put him on the sofa and wrap a shawl round him. Which one of theirs is this? Ramon?’

‘Yes. The baby.’

‘Where are the other two?’

‘They’re gone, too, Mam.’

‘Oh, God!’ Rosita pulled out a chair and sat down suddenly, as Maria carefully laid Ramon on the sofa, and shook out a shawl which normally lay folded on the back of it. As she tucked the shawl round the child, he stirred, put his thumb in his mouth and then seemed to drop off to sleep.

‘Agustin?’ inquired Rosita shakily, as Maria turned to face her.

‘Dead. He was home from sea, and one bomb took him and his family, and Great-Uncle and his family next door but one.’

Maria had held up very well until then. But now she began to cry, while her mother reeled visibly under the blow of her news. ‘Don’t cry, luv,’ she said to her daughter in a pitifully small voice. ‘We’ve got to be the brave ones, and help them.’ Inside, she wished frantically for Bridget, to help her bear the grief.

‘Holy Mary. Give me strength!’ she prayed. She made herself get up and put the kettle on the gas stove, which she lit with a match. Then she went to her daughter, and held her and crooned to her, just as Micaela had done for her in years past. ‘Frannie’ll be home soon, and she’ll help us,’ she comforted the younger daughter. ‘We’re going to have a good strong cup of tea, and then you go back to bed for a while. I’m going to make a big supper. I bet Quanito hasn’t had much to eat these past few days – and he’s got to keep his strength up. Thank goodness, I’ve plenty of fish in.’ Then she added brokenly, ‘Poor Carmela! Poor woman!’

Maria continued to cry for a little while and to hold on to her mother. ‘Come on, my dove. You have to go to work at midnight,’ Rosita said. She mopped the girl’s eyes with her hanky, and then inquired, ‘Has little Ramon had anything to eat?’

‘I got a cup of hot milk into him – but that’s all.’

As her mother made tea and then poured it, Maria sat down and, speaking softly so as not to wake Ramon, she expanded on the tragedy which had struck their extended family. She said, ‘Quanito was so thankful for the kindness which they received, once they came over the bar and were spotted. There’ve been other small boats coming in and the pilots were watching for them, when they went out to other ships. They brought mostly kids with one or two priests looking after them. They’ve been sending them to
Basque camps. I suppose that’s what they’ll do with the neighbours who came with Quanito.’

Rosita took a big gulp of tea. She gestured towards the sofa, and replied firmly, ‘Well, that little chap’s never going to a camp. He stays right here in this house – and so do Quanito and Carmela, until they want to go home.’

Maria smiled faintly at the intensity of feeling in her mother’s voice. She could guess that Rosita was already working out how to squeeze three more people into the little house. Comforted that her mother was now in command and that Francesca would be home soon, she finished her tea and agreed to go back to bed.

When Francesca returned from work, Rosita told her of the tragedy, and she immediately set to to help her mother make the evening meal. In the middle of this, Arnador arrived on his bike, which he parked in their back yard. He knocked at the back door and entered without waiting for a response.

Expecting to pick up Manuel and walk down to the Playhouse, he was very shaken to hear their dreadful news.

He sat for a few minutes with Rosita, while Francesca continued to peel a pile of potatoes, and expressed his sympathy at such a tragedy. Then he said he thought he should get out of their way. ‘I think I’ll go back home to tell Mum and Dad and Josefa – I know they will feel a deep sorrow for you. I’ll drop by tomorrow evening to inquire how Carmela is.’

Very soberly, he let himself out of the back door and wheeled his bike through the yard entrance.

Rosita returned to cutting up fish and breading it. ‘He’s such a nice lad,’ she said. Francesca nodded. Within herself, she was sick with horror, and she would have been glad if sensible, reliable Arnador had stayed a little longer.

When Manuel and Quanito returned about eight o’clock, Francesca was whipping mashed potatoes, and Rosita had a pot of hot fat on the back of the stove waiting
to receive the fish. Bread, cheese and a bowl of Australian apples graced the table; a bowl of tinned peas was keeping hot in the oven.

Rosita did not know what to say, as the apparition which was Quanito entered her living-room. Was that dried blood on his jersey? She opened her arms, and he went into them like a child who had been lost. He said, ‘I’m so tired.’

She held him, while dry sobs shook him. Then she said gently, as she led him to a chair, ‘Sit down here a minute. I’m going to give you a big glass of decent Basque wine, to set you up a bit. Then Manuel’ll take a bowl of hot water upstairs for you, and you can wash yourself, and take those clothes off.’ She turned to Manuel. ‘Mannie, you go and get out a pair of your pyjamas for him and your dressing-gown.’

Without bothering Quanito with a single question, she soon had the family round the table. She herself held a whimpering Ramon. She made a joke of feeding him with well-mashed spoonfuls from her plate, and, after a moment’s hesitation, he seemed to accept her soft, Basque voice, and ate. When she saw that he had a fair number of teeth, she gave him a piece of fried fish in his fist to feed himself. She pressed more wine on his father, and Manuel, remembering his thirst in the hospital, brought a jug of water to him.

After Manuel had taken Quanito upstairs, to sleep in Uncle Leo’s bed, Rosita asked Frannie to get a bowl of water and put it on the table, and she tackled the job of cleaning up Ramon, who was in a disgusting state. She washed the little boy while holding him on her lap. She had no children’s clothes to put on him, so a towel was torn in half to make two clean nappies and then she wrapped him in the shawl from the sofa. As she worked, she played with the child, and finally made him gurgle and smile.

Together her daughters stripped her bed, to put an old oilcloth tablecloth under the bottom sheet, to preserve the
mattress from Ramon, who was, as yet, far from watertight. For several nights, he shared Rosita’s bed, until the second-hand shop in nearby Granby Street was able to provide a small truckle bed for him.

When Ramon had been topped up with as much hot milk as he would accept, he was laid in the bed, still in the shawl, and Rosita lay by him until he slept. Then she went downstairs again. She was immensely tired herself, but she had, somehow, to plan for the next day. She had no time to grieve.

Downstairs, she found Manuel describing the details of the family in Bilbao to the two young women huddled on the sofa together. The only relation whom the girls had seen before was Uncle Agustin. They knew he had a wife and sons, and that one of his sons was married and had children. But, except for Francesca’s visit as an infant, neither girl had been to Bilbao, so they were not well acquainted with their cousins. Manuel told them, ‘Quanito knew our names, though when he first saw me he did not know, for certain, who I was!’

‘What are we going to do, Mam?’ Francesca asked. ‘I can’t believe what happened to them – it’s too awful to face.’

‘It happened,’ Rosita assured her. ‘And Carmela is obviously very sick.’ She examined her needlepricked left hand, and heaved a great sigh. ‘Well, as I said, they’ll stay with us for now. Just how I cope with tomorrow, I’m not sure.’

Her children stared at her. They understood the complication of having a small boy to care for, when all of them went to work – or, in Manuel’s case, to college; and Quanito would, tomorrow, want to go immediately to the hospital to see his wife.

After an uneasy silent pause, Manuel said, ‘I could miss my morning lectures – I could get a pal to give me his notes to copy – so J could take Quanito up to the hospital. He doesn’t know the city – and it’s two trams.’

Rosita flexed her aching fingers, and said to Manuel, ‘If you and Quanito could watch Ramon first thing tomorrow, I’ll run down to the phone box and phone Sloan’s. Thank goodness, Miss Hamilton doesn’t retire until next year. I can tell her what’s happened, and say I’ll be in on Monday. It’s Friday tomorrow, so I’ll only lose a day and a half. It’ll give me a chance to talk to Quanito and, maybe, get up to the hospital to see Carmela.’

Maria spoke up. ‘If I can get a few hours’ sleep when I come off shift tomorrow morning, I can watch Ramon, so you could get up to the hospital in the afternoon. Then Mannie can get to his afternoon lectures.’