The Liverpool Basque. Helen Forrester
to discard, as much as possible, any trace of their immigrant origin. ‘It’s your grandchildren who will be passionately interested in where they sprang from; they’ll feel more secure,’ she had assured him.
But now, in Lorilyn, he had a grandchild, and she never read any book that she did not have to for her university courses. And what was she proposing to study? Engineering, God save her! Not a decent womanly occupation, like nursing or teaching.
While strolling along the cliffs with Jack, one fine summer day, when the gorse was in riotous yellow bloom and the bees were humming like tiny dynamos, he had broached the subject of human roots.
He said, ‘You know, Jack, people move around too much. A lot of ’em never see another relation, even their grandparents. Come to that, they don’t see much of their mum and dad either, in some cases.’
‘You’re right.’
‘All they’ve got is kids the same age as themselves or television to set the pace. They’ve no idea that we’ve learned ways to endure bad times – cope with difficulties – take disappointments in our stride. And the first time things don’t go just right – well, they’re sunk.’
He paused to watch a small yacht trying to tack against the wind, and muttered irritably, ‘He’ll drown if he don’t watch out.’ Then, picking up the original subject again, he went on, ‘There’s nothing much to make kids feel safe, no standards, no customs. They get no religion even – our Lorilyn’s never seen the inside of a church since she were christened – and I wouldn’t like to offend her father by askin’ what she’s doing with that young man always hanging around her.’ He gave a barking laugh. Then he added, ‘There’s no family discipline – I wouldn’t like my grandfather to see her; he’d have made her toe the line a bit, and he’d have had the backing of everybody else. Sometimes I feel like a voice in the wilderness. Do you?’
Jack’s round red face wrinkled up in a wry grin. Before he answered, he stopped to strike a match and light his pipe, shielding it from the wind with his curved palms. Then, as the pipe glowed and they continued to walk, he nodded agreement. ‘I used to slam my kids when they needed it. It didn’t do much good, because I wasn’t around that much – the wife had to manage while I was at sea.’ He drew slowly on his pipe. Then he continued, ‘And things seemed to be changed almost every time I came home. Nobody else’s kids were going to church any more – so ours wouldn’t. Discipline in school went out, and drugs came in. Like you say, the kids went around in herds all the same age – and there were no cow hands to keep them in line. And God help a cop who boxed their ears for them. I knew what I wanted for my kids, but I didn’t have much luck putting it over.’
Manuel dropped his cigarette butt and ground it out with his heel. ‘Seems to me that when we were having Faith, nobody dared touch a child – even to bath the poor little bugger – unless they had read at least three books by experts! Kathleen had a row of books.’
Jack laughed. ‘Same with us. It was like learning to dance from books – as if we’d no ideas of our own. My mother never needed a book to tell her what to do, and we all grew up knowing what was right and what was wrong – even if we weren’t perfect. I wish my mother had been around when our lads were growing up.’ His red face under his straw hat was filled with pain.
Manuel could have kicked himself for bringing up the subject of children. He had, for the moment, forgotten what a bitter disappointment both Jack’s boys had been to him. They seemed to lack motivation and found it difficult to keep jobs – like homing pigeons, they came back from Vancouver every few months, to live on their father.
Jack was saying bitterly, ‘I wish I’d taken a shore job, so I could’ve been home more.’
‘It’s not your fault, Jack. I’m sure of it. It’s the way things are. They’re treated as kids for far too long. In the old days, by thirteen or fourteen, they would’ve been learning a trade under a weight of older men, who’d have kept them in line; and they’d have learned there’s a limit to what you can get away with.’
‘Jobs are different now. How many of them ever go to sea?’
Manuel snorted. ‘Maybe we should send the whole pack of them to sea for a bit,’ he suggested, trying to lift Jack’s spirits. ‘They’d either drown – or learn their responsibilities mighty fast.’
Unexpectedly, Jack chuckled. ‘They’d soon learn who’s boss.’
Manuel began to laugh. ‘Oh, aye, they would. It would be great to see some of the little bastards in a force ten gale, telling the Old Man they were as good as him – or arguing they had rights, while waves as high as the mast were coming at them!’
‘Mannie, they don’t know nothing about natural things, like waves.’
‘I wouldn’t put it past our Lorilyn to explain the physics of a breaking wave to me!’ responded Manuel.
This made Jack really laugh, as they plunked themselves down on a bench, two old men silhouetted against the rippling sea, which had taught them most of their skills with an iron discipline.
‘Are you glad you went to sea?’ asked Jack from behind a cloud of tobacco smoke.
‘Never dreamed of doing anything else. Not till I met Kathleen, that is; she’d got her eyes on a shore job for me. After we was married, she kept on her nursing and she put me through college, and I come out a marine architect. We had a good life – but I missed the sea.’
‘Humph. My dad was a fisherman, and he took me out to sea when I was nine or ten. I was wet and cold and seasick, but I felt I was a real man. At fourteen, I was a deck boy.’ He made the statement with pride, and then a grin flashed across his face, as he added, ‘I’d never heard of being a teenager; I was a lad learning to be a man under real men. Had some good laughs, though.’
‘Oh, aye. I were happy when I were a little kid, too, with me dad and me Uncle Leo coming and going from sea – and being took down to visit their ships, and listen to them grumble and laugh. And getting a bit of pie from the ship’s cook.’ He paused to light another cigarette, and then went on. ‘And in the house, there was me granny and grandpa to tell me stories. After me mam slapped me for being naughty, me gran would wipe me face – and explain why I got the slap!’ Both men were silent, as they smoked and contemplated the sea and the mountains before them. Then Manuel said in a puzzled way, ‘Our Lorilyn never seems to need a grandpa at all.’
While he recalled this rambling conversation with Jack, he took the handmade patchwork quilt off the bed and folded it carefully and laid it on a chair, and sighed. Though he had tried, he did not feel that he had been a very good grandfather – unlike his own grandfather, Juan Barinèta.
He sat down on the side of his bed, pulled a faded crocheted shawl out of the drawer of the bedside table, and slowly eased himself down on to the bed until he lay on his back. He paused for a moment, while every bone and muscle in his body flashed with sudden aches, then he laid the shawl over himself, clasped his hands over his chest and thankfully closed his eyes. In the moment between waking and sleeping, he remembered Kathleen upbraiding him for resting on top of the patchwork quilt. Although he was tired from a very scary wartime voyage, he had pulled her down on top of him. They had forgotten about keeping the bedspread pristine, while they spent until nightfall making love so satisfactorily that even now, nearly fifty years later, he remembered it with awe. Had he really been that strong? And she so responsive?
After her death, he had come across the old quilt folded away at the back of the linen closet. Still beautiful, its colours muted by many drycleanings, it had been like meeting an old friend again. In a way, it had comforted him for the emptiness of the other side of the bed.
He had returned to his ship on the day following his happy afternoon with Kathleen, and her letter telling him the news about her pregnancy with Faith caught up with him in Galveston, Texas.
He remembered how excited he had been about the child, overwhelmed by the divine mystery of its existence and the sense of responsibility that it had laid upon him.