Читать книгу This Heart Within Me Burns - From Bedlam to Benidorm (Revised & Updated) - Crissy Rock - Страница 16

I fear thee, Ancient Mariner!

I fear thy skinny hand!

And thou art long, and lank, and brown

As the ribb’d sea sand.

But now I must force myself to discuss darker days.

The dark days are locked in a black closet deep inside my head, and that’s where I’d prefer to leave them. Granddad is in that dark place and his whole story needs to be told in the pages of this book, as it may help others who have suffered in a similar way. It has been so hard for me to gather my thoughts on this subject. Scotty has been insistent that I tell this story, but also very understanding. He suggested that using a tape-recorder might help with recapturing difficult memories. Sitting with the tape-recording machine with my hand shaking, I try to press the ‘record’ button, but I know that, once I do that, I must relive those awful memories again. Even if I complete the exercise, would it be as easy to erase those memories from my mind as it would be to erase my voice from the tape?

Incredibly, I succeed; after several days, the tapes are finished. Scotty comes over to listen, but I need to leave the room while he does. I hide in the kitchen for what seems like forever and I hear the tape click stop. When I come back through to the lounge, he has a face as white as a ghost’s and there are tears brimming in his eyes. I have a thousand different emotions coursing through my veins. When he leaves, I have to erase the tapes immediately.

I haven’t mentioned Granddad much up to now, as, to be quite honest, he didn’t figure in my life an awful lot in the early years. Then, he was just a normal, loving granddad. By the time I was eight he was retired, but I can’t remember him being in the house that often. He didn’t have the time of day for our dad and made his feelings well known, which was a mystery to me. Dad was a good husband and a good dad, never out of work and he always put the family before the pub, unlike a lot of men in those days who would drink away the majority of their wages in the bars and working men’s clubs in Liverpool 8. Yet, whenever Dad came into the house, Granddad would make a point of getting up out of his chair and leaving, muttering something under his breath. It must have been hard enough for Dad to be sharing his house with his wife’s parents under those circumstances. Dad was a very placid man but I remember huge rows between him and Granddad, with Mum and Nan trying to keep the peace.

If there were too many people at home, Granddad would disappear. We could be playing together as kids with Mum, and he would seem quite happy, but then Nan would come in and he would announce he was off out to the pub or for a walk along the Pier Head. Occasionally, he would take Brian and me with him; occasionally Ian would come too in his pushchair.

At the Pier Head, we’d gaze down the river looking out to sea, and we’d hear one of Granddad’s vivid stories. He had been a merchant seaman when he was a young man and obviously missed his life at sea. He spent long periods away from home; perhaps that’s why I don’t remember him. Maybe that’s why he couldn’t handle retirement too well – confined to a small two-bed tenement, with a wife, his daughter and her husband and family – when he’d been used to vast expanses of water and space as far as the eye could see.

Looking out from the Pier Head, Granddad would tell us tales about his ships and his journeys to India and Africa, and how long the ships would take to get there. He’d tell us all about the cargoes his ships were delivering, as well as the weird food and spices he would bring back into the Mersey. He’d name every ship he ever worked on, and tell us how wonderful they were, how many were built on the Mersey, and how the Liverpool shipbuilders and dockers were the best in the whole wide world. Then he’d tell us the not-so-nice stories: freak waves, storms and shipwrecks, and a huge big bird called an albatross that spelled doom for any sailor who ever harmed one.

And then he’d recite a poem by Coleridge called The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in which the mariner was the navigator, advising all the sailors which way to go. We’d hear about how those poor sailors were stuck near the Equator in a place called the Doldrums. The Doldrums was a notorious area for sailors because a deadly calm could trap sailing ships for days or weeks on end as they waited for enough wind to power their sails. The sailors in Coleridge’s poem had run out of food and essential supplies.

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.

You could imagine that God would send all the bad sailors to the Doldrums. I’d ask Granddad if he’d ever been there, and he’d nod his head and tell me how his ship had survived.

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

Granddad told us how the sailors got stuck in the Doldrums and blamed the Mariner for their thirst. The crew of the ship turned on their navigator and forced the Mariner to wear a dead albatross around his neck as a punishment.

…What evil looks

Had I from old and young!

Instead of the cross, the Albatross

About my neck was hung.

That floundering ship stayed in the Doldrums until its sailors came across some sort of ghost ship, which placed a curse on the sailors as a punishment for killing the albatross. One by one the sailors all died. I imagined my granddad as the poem’s sole survivor – the Ancient Mariner himself.

And we’d walk back home, Brian and me asking the same questions over and over again about that strange bird called Albert Ross. Granddad answered all our questions, listened and laughed and cuddled us into him to keep warm if it was cold and wet, while we made the long journey home on the top deck of the 86 bus. And back home he’d help us off with our coats and hats and scarves and those bloody mitts on a string, and stand us in front of the fire to get warm.

Coleridge’s poem was beautiful, so descriptive and yet somehow scary. I can remember those lines which were repeated so often by my granddad. Yet I can’t remember my granddad’s voice. I can remember his facial expressions, the clothes he wore on the Pier Head to protect himself from the howling winds that whistled up the Mersey but I can’t remember his bloody voice. Why? I remember the neighbours’ voices and even the ragman’s when he shouted, ‘Any ol’ rags,’ and the voice of every single member of my family long since gone. But not Granddad’s.

I want to remember Granddad’s voice. I want to remember the good times with my granddad… only the good times.

I loved our granddad. I loved him when he took a big cooking apple, sliced the top off, hollowed out the core and replaced it with sugar. He’d then replace the top and call it the apple hat. At 11D Windsor Gardens, we had a small black oven next to the fire and Granddad would bake the apple for 20 minutes, making us wait patiently, then take it out, slice it in half and give it to me and Brian while he looked on smiling.

I’ve already explained that Dad and Granddad didn’t get on. How Dad managed those years living in that house I’ll never know, but events inevitably came to a head in the form of a huge fight. It woke me from a deep sleep and I heard Granddad and Dad cursing and swearing at each other through the bedroom wall. I could make out Mum crying and Nan trying in vain to keep the peace. I wandered through to see what was going on but Nan ushered me back to bed in that soft soothing voice of hers. She was like an oasis in a desert in the highly charged atmosphere of the living room.

I lay awake and prayed to God it would stop.

It didn’t.

The argument went on and on and eventually someone stormed out of the house nearly taking the door off the hinges. The whole house seemed to shake.

A couple of weeks later, at the beginning of 1968, we were on the move. Not far away – we were still in the Windsor Gardens tenement block, but this time at 3C. We were one flight of stairs down from Nan and Granddad, with no more than a three-minute walk between both front doors. It probably wasn’t far enough for Dad but at last he was free from Granddad. Mum and Dad spent every last penny they had furnishing the house and I remember friends and other members of the family turning up at the house with old sofas, scraps of carpets, rugs and pieces of crockery that had more chips in them than the local fish shop. It didn’t matter; this was great, we were getting our own house and, to me and my brothers, it was one big adventure, a new beginning.

Brian and Ian were shown their very own room and I still remember the look of joy on their little faces. But where was I going to sleep? I asked Mum, who was busy unpacking a cardboard box with baby stuff, as – unbeknown to us – she was pregnant with our new little brother.

‘You just stay where you are, Christine,’ she said without looking up. ‘You look after your nan.’

That was it. No more discussions. But I was happy enough. I may not have had my own room like my brothers did, but then again I couldn’t imagine going to sleep without snuggling up to Nan.

So I had the best of both worlds: two houses I could flit between whenever the fancy took me. I had an odd night sleeping with Mum and Dad at 3C but kept my favourite spot in Nan’s bed.

On Christmas Day 1968, my young brother David was born at 3C Windsor Gardens. He was named after Mum’s favourite Christmas carol, ‘Once In Royal David’s City’. David was the opposite of Ian. He was tiny and didn’t seem to grow much. Even when he was three, he only looked like he was about a year old. We used to torment the life out of him, the poor bugger, and he would throw himself on the floor holding his breath till he went blue in the face. It used to frighten the shit out of our mum.

We were one big, mad, but happy family. Or so it seemed to anyone looking in.

When I think of Granddad, I think of two people, two faces, two different men, a gentle old man and Coleridge’s ‘Ancient Mariner’. I feel many things – fear, betrayal, anger, bitterness, disgust, even guilt – but above all I feel confusion. I want to hate him but I can’t. I love him like a granddad and when he died I cried for days.

I’ve talked with Scotty long and hard on which way to approach these difficult next few chapters so that I may feel comfortable with it, but I know that I will never feel comfortable with it. I wish life was like a big blackboard where a big chalky blackboard rubber could wipe those memories away, so they would disappear in the dust.

It was back before the rest of the family moved out of 11D, that Granddad changed. Not overnight, it was a gradual change, but a definite change even so. One minute he would be telling us a story as Nan looked on smiling and, within half an hour of her going out, he would take on a totally different character. Our granddad changed from Dr Jekyll into Mr Hyde.

What I’m about to tell you continues to haunt me through nightmares that show no signs of stopping. In these nightmares, I am Christine Murray aged eight. The memories are clear, vivid and painful, and still torment me to this day.

***

‘Please stop, Granddad, stop picking on Brian. He ’asn’t done not’n.’

‘Christine, help me, help me, please.’

Granddad is picking me little brother up by the throat and holding him up in the air like a ballerina doll. His feet are off the floor and our Brian is struggling to breathe.

‘Stop, Granddad, please stop.’

I pull at me granddad’s trouser leg and he lashes out with his leg. I bounce into the corner of the room and now I am crying.

I can’t look. I cover my face with my hands as I hear the most horrible choking and gurgling sounds, and I know me little brother is in bother.

I hear the clock ticking loudly through all the noise. I know from me teacher at school that each tick is a second, and as I count – one, two, three, four, five, six – still Brian is choking. I don’t want to look but I have to. I have to do something. Brian is looking at me, his eyes begging me to help.

Tick… tick… tick… tick.

‘Please, Granddad,’ I shout but he is not listening. I shout again, this time louder and I am crying.

‘Leave ’im, leave ’im.’

This isn’t me granddad, not the same lovely granddad that takes us to the pier and tells us them lovely stories.

‘Please, God, stop him, please. God, tell him to stop. Help, please, God, please, God, please, God, tell him to get off our Brian.’

Me hands are clasped tight together.

God never answers me prayers. Where are you, God? You’re supposed to be everywhere; come to Windsor Gardens, it’s number 11D.

‘Please, God, please, God.’

I’m praying harder than I have ever prayed before.

‘11D, God… 11D Windsor Gardens, Liverpool 8.’

And then it’s over and Granddad lets Brian drop to the floor.

‘Thank you, God,’ I whisper as I rush over to Brian and Granddad walks away. Poor Brian, he wants to cry but can’t cry ’cause he can hardly breathe. I drape my body over him and cuddle him. I can’t do no more. I want to do more but I can’t think of not’n.

‘Sorry, Brian, I’m sorry, so sorry.’

Granddad calls it the choking game.

***

The following week, Granddad plays the choking game again and I have the same feelings of desperation and hopelessness.

God was too slow last time, so this time I’m crying out for me mum.

Granddad warns me that the more I cry, the longer he chokes me little brother. Brian is looking at me again from the corner of his eyes as they are bustin’ from his skull. I look into those beautiful blue eyes, and see the panic and terror. And then it’s over and he sits sobbing in me arms, all the while asking me, ‘Why didn’t you stop him, Christine?’

His snots are falling between his trembling lips and, although I cuddle him, I make sure I don’t touch the snots.

‘Don’t let him do it again, Christine… please.’

Oh, Brian, my brother, my hero, my friend. He made me a cart of wood and pushed me up and down Crown Street making me feel like a queen. He played Tarzan and Jane with me – when we would jump from the top of our mum’s wardrobe on to the bed, pretending that the bed was an alligator-infested lagoon and that the coats on the bed were the alligators to be fought off. He’d huddle with me underneath coats praying that the dark days of abuse and torment would vanish and the good days would remain.

***

Nan has the cataracts. She is blind as a bat, me mum says, and she needs to go into hospital. So I have to look after me granddad, she tells me.

‘I don’t want to look after him,’ I explain.

‘Why not?’ Mum asks. ‘He’s your granddad.’

I want to tell her he isn’t like me granddad any more but I’m thinking what he told me would happen to me and our Brian if we told anyone. He said we’d go into the naughty home and Mum and Dad wouldn’t ever come to see us. We’d be pushed on a ferry down the Mersey and never seen again.

‘What’s cat ’n axe?’ Brian asks innocently. He’s a bit thick, me brother, fancy not knowin’ that the cataracts are bad eyes.

‘Nan’s going to hospital for an operation to get new eyes,’ I tell him.

‘She’s getting new eyes?’

‘Yes.’

‘What, two new eyes?’

I look at me mum and she smiles and nods.

‘Two new ones,’ I reply confidently.

‘Will they be glass like me ollies?’ (Ollies was the name we had for marbles.)

‘Stupid div,’ I say. ‘No, they’re real ones. She’ll get two new ’uns.’

‘I bet that hurts,’ says Brian.

Me mum and me are getting Nan ready for the hospital and she is a little strange. Quiet like. Me mum says she is nervous but at least when she comes out she’ll be able to see further than the other side of the living room.

I’m not sleeping with Nan tonight. I’m gonna miss snugglin’ up to her. Perhaps Granddad will keep me warm. He hasn’t played the choking game for a while. Maybe he’s back to our normal granddad.

I’m sleeping when Granddad comes to bed but he wakes me up moaning and groaning.

‘What’s wrong, Granddad?’

He turns over.

‘Me stomach, Christine. It hurts terrible. It needs to be rubbed.’

Granddad reaches under the covers for me hand.

‘Will you rub me belly, Christine? Make Granddad all better.’

Granddad puts me hand on his stomach and makes me start rubbing him. I pull me hand away straight away and he clouts me on the back of me head.

‘Rub me belly.’

He puts me hand down there again.

‘I don’t like it.’

‘Rub me belly. You want Granddad to get better, don’t you?’

Before I can answer, he hits me again.

He closes me hand round his belly and makes me rub it faster. It doesn’t feel right, all lumpy and hard. I tell him he needs to go to the hospital like me nan and they’ll give him a new belly like they’re giving me nan new eyes. Perhaps Granddad will get a bed next to Nan.

He doesn’t answer; he is moaning in pain. His hand is clasped around my hand squeezing me hard and we are both rubbing at his sore belly.

He seems to relax and suddenly his moaning and groaning has stopped. I think I have made it better. He will be pleased and maybe won’t make us play the choking game again.

In the morning, he orders me into a big bath he has filled. Now, after I have made his belly all better, he’s being nasty to me.

‘How’s your belly, Granddad?’

At first, he doesn’t answer me. Then he tells me I am dirty and filthy and disgusting. He grabs me by the neck and says if I tell anyone what happened to his belly they’ll take me away forever and everyone will hate me and I won’t see Brian for 50 years.

I’m crying in the bath telling Granddad that I’m sorry I didn’t fix his belly. He’s throwing cups of water into my face so I can hardly breathe.

‘I’m sorry, Granddad, I won’t tell anyone. I’m sorry.’

‘Shut the fuck up, you snivelling get.’

My other granddad never uses the fuck word, never ever, ever.

And still he throws the water in my face and uses the fuck word again and others I haven’t heard before and grabs me by the hair and forces my head under the water and I can’t breathe. Eventually, he lets me up and I gulp in the air as quick as I can so I don’t die.

And then he shouts, ‘Now get out of that bath and get dried.’

I lie in the bath crying until the water is freezing cold. I am so scared and want to ask Granddad what I have done that is so bad. I thought I was helping him. Perhaps he is right, I am filthy and disgusting.

I sob out loud, ‘Don’t make me go away, Granddad, please. I love Brian, Brian needs me to protect him, please, Granddad, no… I won’t ever, ever, ever tell anyone, honest to God, I won’t ever tell.’

Me mum finds me shivering in the bath but tells me to hurry up as we have to visit Nan in the hospital. She asks me where Granddad is and I tell her I don’t know.

We aren’t allowed in hospital to see Nan. The hospital won’t allow me and Brian in, only me mum. So we are standing by the wall across the road from the hospital and Mum says she will get Nan to wave out of her window at the end of the ward. Dad isn’t with us, he’s working, but Granddad hasn’t come either, which doesn’t seem right to me.

I ask Brian what he thinks but he calls Granddad a bastard and says he doesn’t care. I scold him and tell him not to use words like that about our granddad. Brian and me look up at the big hospital, and to floor number seven. Mum has told us that, if we look there, she will get Nan out of bed and make her wave to us. Five minutes after Mum goes into the hospital, we see people at the place where she pointed.

The tiny figures are hard to see but there are two of them and they are waving, and me and Brian wave back and… yes… it’s me mum and Nan. I’m glad I’ve walked right across Liverpool to see her. I hope she comes back to 11D Windsor Gardens soon.

***

Nan returned from hospital with much-improved eyesight, and I can remember cuddling her tight all night the first night she was home. I hugged her so tightly she said she could hardly breathe. But I knew I would be safe now. Nan, my protector, was back home.