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