Chrissie's story (Chapter one)

De-lousing

On Fridays, my dad would leave for the pub, all dressed up, at nine thirty, getting there for ten. He made slow progress because of his wheezy chest. He also knew he could afford only one pint and had to make it last until closing time. Around this time I began to go to school. Until then I had been spending all my playing time in the field, which had the odd bomb crater, or Newsham Park which was a walk of about five minutes from our street.

I didn’t have a pair of shoes and wore a combination of hand-me-downs and rags that the boys or I found. Personal hygiene was not a major priority. We were infested with lice and I constantly had a snotty nose. In my best and only frock I began attending St Cecilia’s Primary School. The teachers took one look at the dishevelled child newly placed in their care and immediately made up their minds about me.

I was placed at a desk on my own and ignored for most of the time. I say ‘for most of the time’ because I was first on the teachers’ list for one event: de-lousing. The head’s study doubled as a medical room. We were sent in one at a time to the nurse. ‘Nitty Nora the head explorer’ was her title among the children. After the first time, I learned to fear the nurse because I knew that I was always infested. The frequent visits to ‘Nitty Nora’ were humiliating, frightening and painful.

Broken biscuits

We would go into the room and ‘nurse’ would be standing there, prim and immaculate, in a starched white apron. On the desk were two sets of notes, one white, one blue. A blue note would mean a trip to the dreaded Plumpton Street clinic off Everton Road. The nurse would lift strands of hair looking for the tell-tale eggs which clung to the strands near the scalp. By this point I’d be saying ‘Hail Marys’, but my prayers were never answered. I’d get a blue note. Then I’d be sent around the classes to gather my brothers for the usual family trip to the clinic. We’d walk down West Derby Road, invariably arriving late in the afternoon.

Even by my first visit the Lewington clan was well known. We’d hand in our blue notes, which read ninety per cent infestation, and receive the treatment and the harangue of the nurse. “I hate you dirty lot,” she’d say, as she dragged the fine toothcomb through our hair. The lice were killed with DDT, which stung like hell when it touched an open sore. We scratched so often and hard that there were lots of open sores. Then came another steel comb. This one, seeming sharper, would be dragged across your scalp in long, agonising sweeps.

Back home all the other kids in the street were told not to play with us. At school the teachers hated us because we were filthy. No one sat next to us because we were smelly. The only good thing was the sixpence we were given to use on the tram fare for the journey to Everton Road. We walked instead, and spent the ‘tram fare’ on broken biscuits. But the treat was not fair compensation for the painful visits to ‘Nitty Nora.’ As a result I soon stopped going to school very much at all.

Collapse

Dad’s health had been failing for some time. He had visited the hospital about a blood clot and expected to have an operation to remove it. A few years earlier my dad had been part of a gang digging service trenches for Liverpool Corporation. He had been told to do some more digging in a particular trench and it was not properly secured. Inevitably the trench fell in and my dad had to be dug out. He didn’t seem to be too badly injured at the time, but the blood clot developed and the hospital put it down to the injuries he had received.

One night when my mother had gone to the cinema, which we called the picture-house, and only Eddie and I were in the house with him, he went to the outdoor toilet. After a while Eddie went out to see if he was all right. He wasn’t, but he managed to stagger up to the back door before collapsing on the floor.

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