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