This Heart Within Me Burns - From Bedlam to Benidorm (Revised & Updated). Crissy Rock
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.