The Liverpool Basque. Helen Forrester
used in our street.
At the beginning of each voyage, Father arranged with his employers for Mother to receive part of his wages each week. This was called an allotment, and, together with Grandpa’s and Uncle Leo’s earnings, was used for living expenses.
Grandma gave back to the men a little pocket money for wine and tobacco, both discreetly brought into the country by Basque seamen lucky enough to be sailing to and from their homeland, Vizcaya, in Spain.
A meal isn’t complete without wine, my grandfather would often say. Smuggled wines were cheap, and, on the whole, the customs officers did not worry too much about collecting duty on a few bottles of our native wines, as long as its illicit importation was on a very small scale.
Though ours was a very united household, it was not a placid one. Argument, debate were the salt of life, and, in addition, there were all kinds of small vendettas within the Basque community. The community became a solid block, however, whenever it felt it had, as a group, been insulted. The supreme calumny was to be referred to as Spaniards! Such a blunder was frequently made by our cheerful, easygoing fellow Liverpudlians, especially the Irish, who seemed sorely lacking in a knowledge of Iberian history, and by English clerks behind official counters, who didn’t really care what we were.
Amongst the men gathered round our kitchen table for a smoke and a gossip, such an allegation produced a glowering animosity; they sputtered like half-lit sparklers, and muttered about the improbable origins of all the accursed Spaniards they had ever met. Many of them spoke Spanish as well as they did Basque, and they could be equally rude in both languages; even in English, the English of the back streets, they could be quite lurid. My knowledge of lively curses in all three languages began at an early age.
So, from the time I was big enough to be carried around on Grandpa’s or Uncle Leo’s shoulder, I learned that I was a Basque and to be proud of it. I learned to speak Basque first; it was the language which flowed around my small world of kitchen-living-room and bricklined backyard; I learned good Castilian from the Spanish priests of St Peter’s Church – they were frequently in and out of our homes, to counsel or console, their lean, dark figures the epitome of God’s authority over little boys. And I learned English from my playmates in the street.
Grandpa had a beard heavily streaked with grey. His head was bald, except for a thin ring of neatly clipped black hair. Most of his teeth were deep-stained by tobacco, but a missing one had been replaced by a gold tooth which flashed as he talked; I was fascinated by it and my first ambition was to have a flashing gold tooth for myself. He had gone to sea in the days of sailing ships, and was proud to say that he had several times breasted the storms of Cape Horn, a place of terror at the most southerly point of Chile, where many a ship was lost before the advent of the Panama Canal gave a safer entry to the Pacific Ocean. ‘They don’t know what seamanship is, nowadays,’ he would grumble testily to my father, when he told of his adventures in a steamer.
For many years now, Grandpa Barinèta had held the agency for Basque emigrants passing through Liverpool on their way to Nevada, Arizona, California and Washington. An Agent was essential to protect such travellers from exploitation in a strange port, where their language was not spoken. He saw that they were housed and fed, while they waited for their ship; he kept their luggage safe, and delivered them to the correct ship at the right time. It was his pride that, to his knowledge, he had never lost even a piece of luggage, never mind an emigrant.
Many of these people were lodged in our own house, which was a large eighteenth-century dwelling, and I was quite used to our home being suddenly filled with strangers, who equally suddenly vanished a few days later. Even as a little child, I sensed how touchingly thankful they were to be in the hands of a fellow Basque, who took care that they were not robbed or cheated by local rascals who made a living by preying on confused travellers trying to get to the New World; and I will never forget Grandpa’s slow smile of satisfaction when he could close his ledger after a boat sailed, and sink into his carving chair at the kitchen table to enjoy a quiet glass of wine with Grandma and Mother.
These transitory invasions made our house a very lively one, and a centre for resident Basques, who often drifted in to hear recent news of Vizcaya from the emigrants. The house was opposite the Wapping Dock, except that across a narrow street, the tall flat-iron building of the Baltic Fleet intervened. This public house was a popular meeting place, almost a club, to the Basque community, and emigrants often took their ease there, too. My mother told me that she sometimes went for a drink there with my father, and that she used to park me, sound asleep in my pram, by its ample walls, while she went inside. No wonder it was one of my favourite pubs when I grew up!
As I grew a little bigger, my greatest ambition became to climb into the toast-rack horse-bus, with its little canopy over the rear seats, and have a ride with the emigrants down to the big ship which took them over the ocean to the New World. On the bus’s side was the name of a steamship company, and on a grubby white board at the front was the name of the ship on which the emigrants were booked. The bus was drawn by two patient, blinkered work horses, heads hanging and untidy short manes blowing in the sea wind, as they waited for the harassed, worried emigrants to be loaded.
‘Grandpa! Let me go down to the dock – please, Grandpa. I’m five now. I’m big enough,’ I pleaded, one sunny September day in 1913.
He stood on the pavement, between our front door and the horse-bus, in his hand a piece of board with innumerable sheets of paper pinned to it, his peaked cap pushed to the back of his head, while he supervised the people climbing on to the bus. I clutched at his long, serge-covered legs, and peered up at him to catch his eye.
He looked down at me impatiently. He was fond of me, I knew, but at that moment I was a nuisance, as round him swirled an anxious group of heavily laden men, women and children, all of them desperately dependent upon him.
‘Manuel Echaniz! The bus is too full,’ he responded with exasperation. ‘Go and see your mother in the kitchen.’ As I reluctantly let go of his leg, his voice rose to a shriek. ‘Mind out! You’re too close to the wheels. Get out of the way, boy.’
My face fell. I wanted to cry. At five, I felt I was grown-up enough to be able to keep out of the way of wheels and horses’ feet. But when Grandpa spoke like that, everyone obeyed, even Mother and Father. Sullenly and with difficulty, I turned away and pushed myself between long, trousered legs and flowing black skirts issuing from the house, an incredible stream of people. A white-faced little girl, with whom I had played for the past week, said shyly, ‘Goodbye, Manuel,’ as I shoved by her. I did not reply, as I fought my way kitchenwards. Through my ill humour, I smelled the emigrants’ underlying fear, and it made me uneasy, as baskets, bundles tied in old shawls, and the bare feet of small children carried in their parents’ arms brushed or bumped my head.
When I was a little older, I was able to visualize more accurately the discomforts of the long voyage in steerage still faced by our visitors, and could understand their dread. Meanwhile, infected by their fear, I almost ran down the deserted back part of the passageway leading to the kitchen and safety, while Grandpa, his pencil tucked behind his ear, continued to cope with the travellers.
Grandpa had a habit of rubbing his short beard when hard-pressed by nervous questions from his charges. Already tired from the journey from Bilbao, and distressed at leaving home, however poverty-stricken, the emigrants seemed to find great comfort and reassurance from the self-confident old man. Now, at the time of parting from us, some of the women were invariably near to tears; not only did they have yet to face the long voyage to New York, but also a long train journey to the West, with children and husbands to keep fed and happy. In some cases, they had to sustain a pregnancy and, at the end, a confinement amid strangers.
On the other hand, there was always a group of young, single men, excited, strung-up and sometimes drunk, for Grandpa to control; on each he pinned a numbered identity disc, while they laughed and joked, and talked of making a fortune in their new land. Not for ever would they tend other people’s sheep in Nevada, they assured each other.
In the big, stone-floored kitchen-living-room, with its high ceiling covered with a century of soot, my comfortable,