The Liverpool Basque. Helen Forrester
The day after the three chickens had been carefully prepared for cooking, Pedro had run up the steps of his father-in-law’s house. The front door was hospitably ajar, and through it wafted an excellent smell of cooking – olive oil, garlic, onions, herbs and chicken. How good it would be to eat some decent food!
In the narrow hall, he slung his kitbag to the floor and threw down his heavy jacket and peaked cap.
‘Rosita!’ he shouted, over the clamour of the riveters in the workshop immediately to the rear of the house. Dear God! How could she stand that kind of noise all day long? ‘Rosita!’
She heard him and came running, plump face beaming and blue eyes flashing, her mass of wavy red hair bouncing round her shoulders. She flew into his arms, and, over the odours of cooking and babies, he smelled the freshness of her. He always swore to himself that every time he returned home he fell in love with her again.
Before the family caught up with them, he hugged and kissed her, cupping one breast in an eager hand, feeling the dampness of her milk soaking through her starched flowered pinafore.
She giggled happily; seconds of privacy were precious in a house full of relations – and often with emigrants as well.
He dropped his hand, as his tiny mother-in-law came pattering after her daughter, followed closely by Grandpa Juan Barinèta. Behind them, Manuel stood shyly by the kitchen door, waiting to be noticed.
Over his wife’s head, Pedro greeted his parents-in-law; he was struck by how old they seemed suddenly to have become. He was fond of both of them, and was thankful that Rosita had their company while he was at sea.
With a twinge of anxiety for the old people, he loosened himself from Rosita, to bend and kiss Micaela’s cheek. He then embraced Juan.
‘It’s been a long time,’ Grandpa said, keeping his arm round the younger man’s shoulder. ‘Come in, boy. Come in.’
Pedro moved down the passage, and then saw Manuel. He stopped and squatted down close to him. ‘How’s my big lad?’ he asked, and opened his arms to him, and the boy went joyfully into them. There was the feel of his father’s beard on his cheek, the smell of sweat and tobacco and wine, the total comfort of his being.
Manuel chuckled in his father’s ear, and said shyly that he was all right.
In the steamy kitchen, Pedro stretched himself and looked around the familiar domain. Auntie Maria shyly and carefully rose from her chair to greet him; she was dressed in her best black skirt and black silk blouse. Jet earrings hung against her cheeks.
‘Maria! You’re up and about!’ exclaimed Pedro, as if he had already been primed by Grandma what to say to the stricken woman. Without hesitation, he went to her and put his arm protectively round her shoulders, as she subsided again into her chair, and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘I thought you would still be in hospital.’
She glowed, as she looked up at him with frank yearning. Why tell him that she was at home because the doctors could do no more for her?
‘I’m doing quite well,’ she affirmed. ‘I can sit in the yard – or on the steps, and I’m hoping to walk out soon.’
He looked into the big blue eyes turned up towards him, so like his wife’s but without her beauty; and he knew that she was lying. He played up to her, however, and joked about all the young Basques who would ask her out when she could get about again. Manuel came to lean against her, so as to be included in his father’s attention. He realized that nobody but his father ever kissed Auntie Maria, and he sensed his aunt’s pleasure at being so closely touched by another human being, though he did not yet fully understand her inner loneliness, caused by other people’s fear of catching her dread disease.
Grandma Micaela turned quickly away from the little group, and went to fetch some wine glasses from the dresser. There was a lump in her throat and she wanted to cry. With Leo gone and Agustin rarely in Liverpool, her daughters were doubly precious to her, and yet she had to accept that Maria was preparing for a much longer journey.
She took a big breath, and, with her hands full of glasses, she turned back to the family. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ she suggested gaily. ‘Juan, dear. Get a bottle out for us.’
As Grandpa produced a bottle of good Basque wine, Rosita said cheerfully to Pedro, ‘You haven’t met your daughter yet!’
She bent down and scooped the child out of her wooden cradle, and thrust her into her father’s arms. Francesca stared up at him with some perplexity. She opened her tiny mouth to cry. Pedro suddenly laughed, and said to Rosita, ‘She’s the dead spit of you. Look at her! Blue eyes and all that red fluff on her head.’
His wife playfully shook her red mane over the baby’s face. ‘She’s goin’ to be just like her mam, aren’t you, luv,’ she said to the child, and Pedro’s loins ached, as the creamy skin of his wife’s neck came close to him.
The baby whimpered uncertainly, and Rosita snatched her back. Manuel promptly eased himself on to his father’s knee. Over his head, Pedro asked her, ‘Did you have a bad time with her?’
‘Not too bad,’ she told him.
He took a sip of his wine, and looked wickedly over his glass at her. She flounced provocatively away from him to return the child to her cradle, and stood, hand on hip, watching him, as she rocked the cradle with her foot to soothe the baby.
The kitchen fell silent after this as everyone sipped their wine, and listened to the tolling of the bell of the dock railway train, as it passed along the street under the overhead railway, and to the usual turmoil of the machinery in the buildings at the back of the house.
While the train clattered rhythmically on its way, Pedro stared at his half-empty glass and wondered what to say. Once greetings had been exchanged, he had to pick up the threads of his life ashore; it was like trying to understand the gist of a novel after commencing to read it in the middle of the volume.
Rosita wrote to him regularly during his absences, though, occasionally, he received the letters only when he returned to Liverpool; in any case, they did not really convey to him the daily ups and downs of the family. It took time to understand all the references made in the course of the family’s conversations.
There were times when Pedro felt that his shipmates were closer to him than his family was; they certainly knew more about each other than their families did. He had sailed with some of them for years. Yet he loved Rosita; and Manuel was someone to boast about through many a monotonous day at sea. He felt guilty that his first inner reaction to the new baby had been that it would be something to tell his mates about when he returned to sea – another beautiful redhead. He ran his fingers through his roughly cut hair; it was sticky with salt. He could use a good scrub down in the old tin bath; but he could have it only when all the family had gone to bed, and he could have the privacy of the empty kitchen-living-room. He sighed, and puffed at his pipe.
The awkward silence was broken by Manuel. With his head against his father’s shoulder, he asked shyly, in Basque, ‘What’ve you brought me, Daddy?’
Pedro immediately snapped out of his reverie and put down his pipe. ‘Aha!’ he exclaimed mysteriously. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ He clutched the boy tighter, enjoying the child’s warm trust.
Manuel giggled and pushed himself off Pedro’s knee. ‘Let’s see,’ he urged, and trotted towards the kitbag, still lying in the hall.
Underneath all the impedimenta of a seaman’s life, just when it seemed to Manuel that his father must have lost the gifts he had purchased, they unearthed a cream jug in the shape of a cow, for Grandma to add to her collection of little jugs, and a big tin of good Virginia tobacco for Grandpa.
A parcel, wrapped in tissue paper, was handed to Rosita, who cautiously peeped into it, and then blushed and giggled when she discovered a lace-trimmed petticoat. She hastily wrapped it up again, while Manuel’s mouth drooped and his eyes grew wide with disappointment. A further burrowing in the bag produced