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