Читать книгу This Heart Within Me Burns - From Bedlam to Benidorm (Revised & Updated) - Crissy Rock - Страница 14

The ship was cheer’d the harbour clear’d,

Merrily did we drop

Below the kirk, below the hill,

Below the lighthouse top.

At that time of our lives, everything seemed so cosy; we never gave a thought to any dangers in the street or who or what could be lurking in the derelict houses and we’d never heard of paedophiles or murderers. The only bad men we’d heard of were Ole Nick and Spring Heeled Jack. Mum would say, ‘Don’t go wandering off or Spring Heeled Jack will get you’ or ‘Don’t be naughty or I’ll send you to Ole Nick.’

Occasionally, you would hear of a burglary or a mugging, but that was big news and very rare. We were brought up to know that the people who did such things were bad. Mum and Dad drilled into us what was right and wrong. We had a huge loving family and loads of friends and, even though we didn’t have any money, in many respects we were the richest kids in the world. I would never have swapped those first six or seven years of my life for all the tea in China.

Nan, who we lived with in Windsor Gardens, was called Henrietta, but everyone called her Hetty. She was dead funny. She too was very small, only five foot in her stocking feet, and she had a lone gold tooth set in her false teeth which glistened whenever she smiled. I have a picture of her in my head standing in front of an open fire laughing at some funny story she had relayed, her gold tooth sparkling like a beacon as her head lolled backwards, and not being able to speak for laughing so hard. Apart from her gold tooth, a worn thin wedding ring was the only other gold thing she ever owned.

I remember her long fair hair and her constant singing. Her pride and joy was an old stereogram that stood on legs under the window and looked like a bloody big coffin. Her favourite singer was the country and western artist Jim Reeves, and she played his records morning, noon and night. I don’t know if she had any records of other singers but if she did they’d never come out of the box. Her favourite Jim Reeves song was ‘Welcome To My World’. More often than not, as I came in from school, it would be playing. As I came through the door, she would always have a smile for me.

I can still hear her now, saying, ‘Hello, me little one. D’yi wanna join me in a dance?’

I’d smile and nod, and run over to where she stood grinning with her arms held out wide. I would step on to her slippers and she would waltz me around the room singing along word-perfect to ‘Welcome To My World’. I’d squeal with laughter as she closed her eyes and lost herself in her dreams. She’d open them occasionally to make sure we weren’t heading for the fire then screw them tightly shut again as quickly as she could.

If I hear that song today, it still brings a tear to my eyes and I am there, back in Liverpool 8 as a six-year-old dancing with my lovely nan in the living room in my safe and loving world. A travel company has recently adopted the song for its ads on TV and, every time it comes on, I have to fight back the tears. I miss her so much. She was perfect in every way, and I loved her with all my heart.

I don’t remember her ever shouting, even when she used to call me for my tea at nights. There was no need for her to raise her voice – it was as if her voice had the perfect pitch to make it heard.

Nan’s skin was like silk apart from her hands that were as rough as a docker’s.

Nan did everything for all of us. She seemed to sense when she was particularly needed, when Mum’s nerves were about to become overpowering. Nan seemed to clean from the minute she got up until the minute she went to bed. We had nothing, no fancy furniture or fireplace ornaments but, even so, what little we had always sparkled.

The step outside our house was always spotless too. Nan cleaned it with Vim at least two or three times a week and she’d even sand the stone a little to make a perfect edge. I can’t understand how that step didn’t disappear altogether. To look at Nan’s perfect shiny step from the landing of the tenement block where we lived, you’d think we lived in a palace. It was an illusion Nan painted to the outside world until she could no longer get down on her hands and knees. She kept trying, of course, but then couldn’t get up again and had to be physically lifted on to her feet. As I walk across that step in my daydreams, I can still remember the distinct smell of damp Vim.

There are so many smells I remember from those days, and most of them I associate with Nan. I can still smell the paraffin from the heater that was used in the winter and the carbolic soap that Nan scrubbed everything with… including us. There was San Izal, a black thick syrupy tar that bubbled white when it came into contact with water. She’d do the veranda with that, and the hearth with Zebro. I’d help her with the hearth helping to buff it up. It was black lead and Nan and me would finish up looking like Al Jolson. Then there were the smells from the washhouse, and I have another crystal-clear memory of watching her operating a manual mangle with the steam rising from the clothes, while singing ‘Welcome To My World’.

I loved the trips to the washhouse, helping Nan pile the clothes and bedding into a huge sheet in the middle of the kitchen and tying it up into a big bundle. She would heave the washing on to the old washhouse pram and Brian and me would push from underneath. We’d run alongside the pram as Nan pushed it along the landing and we’d giggle and laugh in anticipation as we reached the stairs – we had to get the pram and washing down eight flights of them.

Usually, for such a job, you’d enlist family members and neighbours to carefully manoeuvre the pram down each step of each flight, practically carrying the pram down to the front street. Not our nan.

‘Are you ready, Christine, Brian? Right, here we go!’

And, with a wicked grin and a quick check to make sure the washing was wedged tightly into the pram, she’d heave the pram off the top step of the landing.

The pram bounced and clattered down every step and the exercise was repeated eight times at the top of each landing. How the pram never fell to bits I’ll never know but it didn’t. Me and Brian would shriek with laughter as the poor thing groaned under the effort before finally coming to rest a few minutes later at the entrance leading out into the street. The neighbours would be cursing and shouting, but their raised voices were barely audible through the thick brick and plaster walls. Just as well the walls were thick: our nan’s pram must have taken half a dozen inches of plaster from those walls over the years.

Once in the front street, Nan would be off as if she were in a race. We would try to keep up with her and, eventually, as Brian would be lagging behind, she would lift him up to sit him on top of the bundle and off we would go to the washhouse. Me and Brian would sit outside and play with the pram, taking turns to push each other up and down the street until Nan came back out again. We would be absolutely knackered and once again Brian, being the little one, would get the prime spot sitting on top of the clean washing, holding on to the huge knot of the sheet as if he were John Wayne on his horse riding across the screen of the Tunnel Road picture house, and there he’d sit smiling with a grin as big as the Mersey Tunnel all the way home. All simple memories of innocent fun-packed days.

I don’t remember how old we were when Mum had another baby. It was a little girl called Janet but, from the beginning, even though I was just a child myself, I instinctively knew something was wrong, very wrong. Janet was born at home, while Brian and I played on the front landing. I heard my nan say she had been born very ill, with her nose bleeding, and they couldn’t stop the blood. I remember everybody being upset but didn’t understand what was happening to my new sister. The very next day, the vicar came and she was christened. I was happy because the vicar was obviously there to tell God to make her better and then everything would be fine again. But the vicar looked so sad and sombre and I didn’t quite understand that. Had God not answered his prayers?

Janet died a day after she was born, but we never really knew what ‘dead’ was. Death was never discussed with kids and we were always just told if someone had died they were away to see baby Jesus. Why was everyone so sad? I wondered. I’d love to see baby Jesus.

Mum never really got over Janet’s death. She had the nerves all over again, only this time they were even worse. There were no more days in the park or ferry trips to New Brighton. Instead, Mum started taking us to Smithdown Road Cemetery where Janet was buried. But, because there had been no money for a funeral, she had been buried in an unmarked grave without so much as a little stone with her name on. It was like she never existed. What was that all about? The council deliberately punished people with no money, stopping them from grieving. The evil, wicked bastards.

We’d still go to the cemetery looking to see if we could find the grave our sister was in. Mum would wander around in a daze, checking every headstone convinced that we would find one with ‘Janet Murray’ engraved on it. Meanwhile, me and Brian would pick daisies, dandelions and buttercups to put on graves with no headstones just in case Janet was buried under any of them. There was a little comfort for Mum in knowing her baby was close by, yet she also knew she could never sit down beside Janet’s grave and mourn. The pain in our mum’s heart was unimaginable and eventually wore her down. In the following years, she seemed to spend more time in hospital than she did at home.

After a couple of years, Mum fell pregnant again, and this time gave birth in hospital to a fit and healthy baby boy called Ian. He was a chubby little thing with a big mop of black hair and it seemed to be just the tonic Mum needed. So we were back to being a normal family again.

As he got a bit older, Mum would let us take Ian out in his little pram. Letting two small kids out with a three-year-old would be unheard of these days but back then it was perfectly normal. Liverpool was like one huge family and you didn’t just have one mum: the whole street was your mum looking out for you and making sure you didn’t get into any trouble. Everyone knew everyone in the tenement blocks and streets of Liverpool 8.

We would take turns pushing him in his little pushchair. Of course, we still got into the odd scrape but nothing too serious. Once I remember passing the coal yard coming back from Ninny Lizzy’s and there was a hole in the fence with coal coming out of it. Free coal, we thought, a gift from God. What did we do? We piled all the coal we could into the pram with Ian still in it. Every square inch of the pram was full and we piled it so high around Ian that all you could see was his little head poking out with his black hands resting on top. Ian thought it was great fun; he was the centre of attention and even grabbed a piece of coal to see what it tasted like.

He was black as the hobs of hell, but we thought Mum and Dad would be so happy with all the free coal we’d brought home for the family. A little carbolic soap and Ian would be as good as new. Of course, Mum and Dad didn’t see it that way and, although Dad offloaded every piece of coal and seemed quite pleased, Mum ranted like a madwoman and I was convinced we’d brought the nerves on again.

We were barred from taking Ian out for a few days but, once he started getting under Mum’s feet again, she relented, although we were given a stern lecture about what we could and couldn’t do with him.

One day as we left with Ian, Mum issued a final warning: ‘Don’t be going taking him to them bloody empty houses. D’ya hear me?’

Brian and I looked at each other. Had she known we’d been in those derelict houses?

At the broken back lane gate outside one of Crown Street’s empty houses, the two of us argued over whether or not we could take Ian in.

‘He’ll cry if we don’t take him in,’ said Brian. ‘We always take him in.’

‘But Mum said we couldn’t,’ I countered.

‘But she won’t know.’

‘She will.’

‘She won’t.’

‘She will. Mums always find out, that’s what mums do best.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ he insisted. ‘She’s at home.’

Brian was right but I was having none of it. Mum’s words were still fresh in my mind and her handprints still on me arse. Although I couldn’t hear her voice, it was as if she would somehow know by magical telepathy if we took him into those empty houses. I was convinced of it.

Just then we had a great idea. Ian loved cowboys and Indians so we told him we were starting a game. I told him he was a cowboy and that he had been captured by the Indians (Brian and me). We played out the game and lifted him out of his pushchair whooping and wailing like red Indians. We stood either side and frogmarched him to the nearest lamp post where we tied him to it with his snake belt.

We told him he would need to wait until we came back.

‘Where are you goin’?’ he said.

We looked at him as if he was stupid. ‘To get more cowboys, of course.’

‘Aahhh.’ He nodded, glad to be playing such an important part in the game.

What a brilliant plan, Brian and me could change the game to Wuthering Heights and Ian was safe as houses because he couldn’t go anywhere. Fantastic… almost foolproof. Almost…

How could we have known that Mum had gone out for some bread and milk? She found Ian tied to the lamp post screaming his eyes out and she came looking for us. When she found us in the empty derelict houses, she ragged us both all the way home. I swear Ian suffered a bigger trauma the way Mum shouted and bawled all the way back home than he ever did getting tied to a lamp post for an hour… or was it longer? We weren’t allowed out for a week, no matter how much we begged and cried. She kept us in even on Saturday when Dad’s horses were running.

Ian grew up with a stammer, but I swear it was nothing we did to him, honest. He stammered long before we left him tied to that bloody lamp post. The other kids took the mickey out of him a little bit but Brian and me would always stick up for him and Mum said he would grow out of it. I wish he’d grown out of it before Mrs Gee’s dog got a hold of him though.

Mrs Gee lived on the first landing in the corner tenements at the end of our street and had a big Alsatian dog called Major. It wasn’t vicious, just as mad as a box of frogs. Mrs Gee explained to us that it would never bite or chase us if we called out his name loudly as it would think we were its friends. Sure enough, as soon as Mrs Gee called out ‘Major’, that dog would immediately sit, and turn from a big grizzly bear into an obedient little poodle. Then it would wag its tail waiting for her next command.

Major escaped every now and again and, if it saw any kids, a chase would start. It would tear after you but no one ever worried because if you couldn’t shin up a wall or a fence you could just shout its name. At the sound of ‘Major, no! Major, no!’, the dog would come to a halt wagging its tail as if by magic. But, if you didn’t include the magic word ‘Major’, it would bite you.

Once, when Ian was about four years old, Brian, Ian and I had gone to Ali’s shop on the corner for sweets. As we passed Mrs Gee’s tenement block, Major was cocking his leg against a lamp post. As soon as the dog saw us, it raced towards us, so we turned and legged it towards the wall of one of the ground-floor flats so we could jump up to get out the way. Me and Brian managed to escape, but inevitably, Ian couldn’t run so fast, and Major was catching up with him.

‘Just shout Major!’ we screamed at Ian.

Hearing the sound of its own name, the dog stopped, but had second thoughts when it realised the cry hadn’t come from Ian. So it started chasing him again.

We tried again. ‘Major!’ we shouted at Ian. ‘Shout Major!’

This time, Ian turned to face the dog, ready to call out its name. But of course he couldn’t.

‘M…M…M…M…’

That bloody stutter.

‘Shout Major,’ I squealed.

‘Major,’ shouted Brian.

‘Fuckin’ Major! Shout, “Get down, Major.”’

‘M…M…M…’

Too late. By now, that brute of a bloody dog had sunk its teeth into Ian’s arm and dragged him to the ground. Ian was still screaming but couldn’t scream the name of his attacker, so we shouted the magic word once again. Fortunately, this time, as soon as the dog heard its name, it sat down smiling and began to wag its tail as Ian continued to writhe on the deck in agony. I swear the dog looked at him as if to say, ‘What’s up with him?’Major had done little more than broken Ian’s skin, but he still needed to go to hospital where they put two small stitches into his arm.

Ian’s stutter was another source of worry to Mum. No wonder her nerves were bad, we must have driven her crackers. I had a voice like a foghorn, Brian twitched and tapped his leg every five minutes, and then there was Ian’s stutter. She must have thought she’d given birth to The Three Stooges.

Then there was the day all three of us got a letter home from school. No other kids in my class got one. In fact, there were only four in the whole school who did. As I walked home with Brian and Ian, I tried to convince us all that it was because we’d been really good. But at what?

We all stood in the lounge grinning as Mum opened the letters one by one, taking in the contents before moving on to the next one. Her face was a picture of study; she was obviously thinking about our reward.

‘Have we been good at school, Mum?’ I asked.

‘Yeah,’ she said.

‘What have we been good at?’

‘Catching.’

‘Catching?’

‘Catchin’ bloody nits, that’s what. Now get in that friggin’ bath, you dirty buggers.’

The tin bath normally reserved for a Sunday night was pulled out and placed in front of the fire and it was filled with water much too hot for our little bodies. Mum scrubbed – literally scrubbed – and then Dad rubbed us down with a towel rougher than sandpaper as we stood on a copy of the Liverpool Echo to catch the drips and nits. Nan, who was half blind, was up next in line with a bottle of vinegar in her hand and dragged the nit comb through our hair taking half of our scalp with it. Nan said that the vinegar would burst the eggs. I swear our heads would nearly be bleeding and it felt as if the comb had no teeth in it. By the end of the operation, we were all screaming in pain but were comforted when the nit patrol decided to give us a big doorstep jam butty to take our minds off the pain.

I have happy memories of the long summer holidays and of the winter too even though it was bitterly cold in the tenements in the days before central heating. In the winter, Nan always made us wear liberty bodices. They were a type of combination vest and knickers that had rubber buttons all the way up the front. We were then trussed up in jumpers that had more holes than the ozone layer, with a scarf wrapped around our neck and chest, tied in a knot on our back. Next, black wellington boots, a duffle coat and a balaclava with a pair of mitts on a piece of string which were fed up each sleeve in order that they wouldn’t get lost. (Don’t ask me. I can’t figure that one out either.) I remember Ian’s string being a little too short and as he went for a piece of snow with his right hand his left hand took on an involuntary action of its own.

Like all kids we loved the snow and dreaded when it turned into that awful slush, though it still didn’t stop us from chucking slush balls. Brian, Ian and me would go off like three little Scotts of the Antarctic to play in the snow for hours then head for home bloody freezing, our toes throbbing and our legs ripped to bits with welly rash. All three of us would jostle for position trying to hog the roaring fire to get warm, until our skin turned bright red and Nan would be saying, ‘Don’t be standing too close to the bloody fire. You’ll get corned-beef legs.’

I try my hardest to keep the good memories of those days at the front of my mind and I love talking about them and laughing with anyone who cares to listen, especially my brothers. While some memories are hard to talk about, let alone write, I prefer to think of happy times: Christmas, Hallowe’en and Bonfire Night.

Bonfire Night itself was great, although we never had any fireworks, just sparklers. We’d beg Dad to let us set them off but he’d make us wait until we’d finished our tea, by which time it was really dark. Even Ian was allowed to hold the odd one under the close supervision of Dad.

The run-up to Guy Fawkes’ night was just as great. We’d dress our Ian up as a Guy, standing outside Ali’s sweet shop taking pennies from anyone who passed, and trying to convince people that we’d made him. There’d be plenty of wood for us to collect too, but it had to be protected from rival gangs who lived in the nearby tenement blocks at Myrtle House. Everyone would be trying to steal each other’s wood to see who could build the biggest bonnie in the area. Sometimes it was an all-out war, with the bigger lads throwing stones and kicking lumps out of each other for the sake of a plank of wood or an old settee. We’d watch in admiration as they turned the old wood, chairs and orange boxes into a huge wigwam towering into the sky. How we waited until 5 November before we set it alight, I’ll never know.

Every back lane, every street and every tenement seemed to have a bonfire. Health and safety didn’t come into it in those days and the glow in the pitch-black sky in Liverpool 8 on Bonfire Night could be seen for miles around. We’d throw potatoes on the glowing embers as the fire died down and sit as close as we dared, looking up into the night sky for the fireworks that were being set off around the city. It made me think that heaven was having a huge party.

About, about, in reel and rout

The death fires danced at night;

The water like witches oils,

Burnt green, and blue, and white.

Every day was like a party. Even though we had nothing, somehow our parents seemed to be able to provide just enough to make these special days a joy. They struggled and no doubt did without other things. I will forever be in their debt, God love them both.

Christmas was different because everyone knew that Santa Claus provided all your presents, though I couldn’t quite understand how some kids got more than others. You’d think the fat get would have been able to even it out a little better, wouldn’t you?

Our Christmases were not fancy – they were basic, with only one or two little presents and a bag or two of sweets each – but to us they were special and not once did we ever wake up disappointed. Every year, Mum would take us on a trip to TJ Hughes’ store on London Road, where we’d watch the dancing waters in the grotto absolutely mesmerised as they danced a tune to the music. They were something else. Once the show was over, off we’d go to see Santa in the grotto, excitedly knowing that in a few short days he’d be coming down our chimney. A couple of days later, the Christmas parades with all the floats would heave and groan their way through the town centre. Sometimes I wish those events had been frozen in time, just like our fingers and toes were in the snow. It was great to be a kid back then; I wished we could have stayed that age forever.

It was at Christmas 1966, when I was eight years old, that Santa was particularly generous. I remember it well because we all got a World Cup Willie mascot to celebrate the fact that England had won the World Cup that summer. Dad had been knocked over by a wagon some months earlier when he was delivering his parcels for the railway. Thankfully, he wasn’t hurt too badly but was awarded £100 compensation in the middle of December. I swear he spent every penny of his compensation on that Christmas.

Mum could hardly contain herself; she had woken us at five in the morning to show us how good Father Christmas had been. She was wide awake and grinning as she woke three bleary-eyed youngsters from their slumber and forced us out of bed. So that year, we got loads of presents. We started with the pillowcases by the bottom of the bed: cars, a Snakes and Ladders board game, Tiddlywinks and a climb-in Dr Who Dalek for Ian. In the living room, there were two dolls for me – a Tiny Tears and a Tressy – and in the middle of the room was a brand-new Chopper bike for Brian. There was a police car with a siren, a Spirograph, Ker-Plunk…

Santa had even brought Mum a pair of new curtains. She said it was the first thing she had ever had that wasn’t on tick. We found out later they were magic curtains that wouldn’t go on fire. But we found out by accident.

One night, Brian and me were in on our own watching telly. The telly was from Radio Rentals and had to be fed with a sixpence via a slot in the back. That sixpence would last four or five hours, but it was so annoying when it would run out – especially if we were watching something good and you had to crawl around the back and insert another tanner. The set was so close to the wall it was difficult to see the slot but Brian, being smaller than me, could crawl under the legs of the television to insert the money. To give him enough light to see, I’d get some newspaper and light it from the fire. But that night, when I lit the newspaper and ran towards the telly, the whole bloody sheet of newspaper seemed to have caught fire. I panicked, and the sheet landed on the floor beside the bottom of the curtains. Brian jumped up and down on the flames to put them out like he was Michael Flatley. Yet the curtains never caught fire. They never had a mark on them, not even a singe… They were magic…

What a great opportunity to make a little extra cash, we thought, so we would bring our mates in to see the ‘magic curtains’ and put a match to them. The kids stood back in amazement as the curtains held firm and never caught fire no matter how many matches we held underneath them. We charged a penny a time for the kids to try to set them on fire, even offering a refund if they succeeded. And we thought Mrs Gee’s dog was as mad as a box of frogs!

However, our new business venture was put to bed early when Mum came home one day and caught us red-handed. Picture the scene as she walked into the room to find half a dozen raggy-arsed kids trying to set her bloody house on fire. We had red hands and red arses when my dad got home from his shift at work.