The Liverpool Basque
Another moving and heart-warming tale set in Merseyside from the author of Twopence to Cross the Mersey.In the early years of this century, many Basques left their homeland in the Pyrenees, between France and Spain, to seek a better life in the New World. Most passed through the great port of Liverpool on their way. The family of little Manuel Echaniz stayed.The Liverpool Basque is the story of Manuel’s childhood and coming of age in the teeming streets of the Mersey docklands. It is a story of poverty, comradeship, hardship and generosity. Brought up by women while the men are at sea, Manuel grows up with a fierce pride in his heritage and a powerful will to survive in an era of deprivation and unemployment. Against all odds, he gets himself an education of sorts and sets off on the long voyage of his life.
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HELEN FORRESTER
The Liverpool Basque
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1993
Copyright © Helen Forrester 1993
The Author asserts the moral right tobe identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780006473343
Ebook Edition © DECEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007392162 Version: 2016-08-26
This novel is dedicated to my friend,Doroteo Vicente Elordieta, a Basque from Liverpool,whose wonderful stories about the cityinspired me to write it
Just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined
Epistle i, line 149
Moral Essays
Alexander Pope, 1688–1744
Contents
Ignoring the pouring rain, he came out of the house, and then turned to check that the front door had closed properly behind him. Satisfied, he walked slowly down the path between the flowerbeds, empty except for a few winter aconites cautiously beginning to open.
When he reached the two steps which led down to the pavement, he paused before carefully descending them. As the wind off the Strait caught him, his shiny black oilskin flapped against his lean frame. A fringe of white hair fluttered round the edge of the black beret set firmly on his head; the beret had been arranged so that it had a small peak to protect his forehead and encourage the rain to fall down his cheeks instead of veiling his sight.
Safely on the narrow pavement, he lingered for a moment to look across the Juan de Fuca Strait. The Olympic Mountains were obliterated by the downpour, but nearer to hand a freighter was stubbornly butting its way through the sheeting rain towards Victoria Harbour. With a seaman’s eye for weather, he looked up at the louring clouds, pursed his lips and muttered, ‘Cold enough for snow.’
Water was trickling down his neck, so he heaved his collar up higher and then proceeded along The Esplanade towards the cemetery. He walked with his head bent, his shoulders slightly hunched, as if expecting to hit his skull on a door frame if he straightened up. Though his gait was light and steady, his old Wellington boots made an intermittent squishing sound as he slopped through muddy puddles.
In the large inside pocket of his oilskin was a single pink rose wrapped in damp tissue paper. He had bought it yesterday from the florist in Cook Street; throughout the winter he had a standing order with her, to purchase the flowers four at a time. He kept them fresh in a cut-glass vase on the dining-room table, and, regardless of the weather, he took one each day to the cemetery to lay on the grave of his wife, Kathleen.
Sometimes the florist was not able to obtain the pink or white blooms which he requested, and he would have to make do with red ones, which Kathleen had not loved quite so much. In summer, he cut roses in shades of pink or cream from the bushes which she herself had planted in their garden when first they had retired to Vancouver Island. While she had the strength, she had tenderly pruned and fertilized them herself. Then, when she had begun to fail, he had pushed her wheelchair on to the lawn, and had learned to look after them for her, doing his best to hide from her the agony of mind he had felt, as he watched her suffer the multiple infections to which leukaemia laid her open.
