Nipper

by Mitchell, Charlie

  My dad Jock is a big stout bloke in his early thirties, with dark curly hair and a squashed nose from getting it broken seven times. He’s always had a beard and moustache; sometimes it’s just stubble, but he’s never clean-shaven. His front teeth are like fangs, as he has broken his jaw three or four times and had it wired up with these strange-looking disc things that look like shirt buttons. He has a scar on his left cheek where one of his mates smashed a pint glass in it during a punch-up in the local pub (the Pheasant, I think it was called). He has big hands with great thick fingernails and massive footballer’s legs, and there’s a huge scar on his thigh where he had to have pins put in because someone ran him over after he had tried to run Mum over when she was seven months pregnant.

  He’s a Jekyll and Hyde character, my dad. One minute he’s happy, asking me if I want to go camping, then in a flash he’s snapping about dishes not being done, or my bed not being made. Literally before he has taken a breath. It’s very confusing for me as a kid, as I have to adjust my thinking to cope with two different people, even though I only live with one. I don’t understand why he changes so quickly and there’s no one to help me deal with it. I’m on my own with him and I’m always scared of him.

  Everyone who knows him says he’s one of the funniest blokes they’ve ever met, but a lot of them don’t know how mean and scary he really is behind closed doors. I, on the other hand, am a little short arse with fair mousy brown hair, and freckles on my cheeks and nose. Three foot nothing, built like the gable end of a pound note, with a home-made haircut that Worzel Gummidge’s idiot child would complain about and dressed in naff clothes that Dad buys me in jumble sales and bargain stores. Eighties tat.

  Today I’m wearing a maroon jumper with patches on the elbows, Farah’s Stay-Press trousers with itchy wool, shoes that are at least one size too big from British Home Stores. Most of the time I wear hand-me-downs from Dad’s friends’ kids or from my Aunt Molly’s kids or from Barnardo’s, the charity shop in Reform Street. He gets a grant from the social to buy clothes – he sells it on sometimes for drink but will always make sure I have clothes for the start of the year – like today was going to be. He never takes me out shopping – he just gets the clothes on his own, which is why they’re always too big or too small. He mostly gets them bigger and says I’ll grow into them. It doesn’t matter to him that my shoes look like hand-me-downs from Coco the Clown.

  I’ve also got some other footwear – some sand shoes like plimsoles and a pair of monkey boots, shaped like a meat pastie in front, with stitching like an Eskimo had got his hands on them.

  People I know go snowdropping – that’s nicking off other people’s washing lines – but they leave clothes on our washing line. I remember one of Dad’s mates saying, ‘Jock, if your house was burgled they’d probably leave you a fiver and their shoes.’

  It isn’t just us that are skint though: everyone’s in the same boat. They joke about it bitterly in the pub. Dad sometimes takes me in there with him.

  ‘What will the nipper have?’ one of his drinking pals will say.

  ‘Charlie will have what I have,’ he replies, but then gives a broad wink.

  I sip a Coca Cola while he drinks his vodka and I listen to them all trading hard luck stories and generally having a moan. One of Dad’s friends says that when he has a bath he’s so poor he has to wash the dishes in there with him to save on water, with all the bacon and eggs floating around in his lukewarm bathwater.

  The men in the pub drink their pints and moan and groan about the English and the state of the world. The English they call bloody animals, the police are bastards, the vatman’s a pig, the taxman’s a cunt – as if any of them have ever paid tax or VAT in their lives. All Dad’s friends spend all day in the pub and most of that time is spent talking about the English, but I don’t think they’ve ever even met an Englishman. They seem to have it in for the English, though, mainly because of a woman called Maggie Thatcher.

  Dad blames everything on Maggie Thatcher. I used to think she was the old witch at number 47, the one with the moustache who stabs every ball that goes in her garden. But now I know who she really is. She’s a burglar from another rough area, who comes out at night and steals everyone’s worldly belongings.

  Chapter Two

  A Fairy Tale of Dundee

  Before I say what happens next, I need to tell you how all this began. I still don’t understand most of what went on when I was two years old, but I’ve managed to piece together what happened from my mum and from other people who knew how it was.

  The story began around 1972 in Dundee on the east coast of Scotland, when a sixteen-year-old girl called Sarah (my mum) – who had just left school – met a twenty-one-year-old lad called Jock (my dad) from St Mary’s in Dundee. Mum was beautiful with blue eyes, a pale freckled face and long blonde hair which she wore in a fringe. She came from a decent family and was the middle of six children – with four brothers and one sister.

  He was a strong, handsome lad, of average height and powerfully built. He also had blue eyes, dark curly hair and tanned skin from time spent outdoors. He was a promising footballer – his father had played for Dundee United – and he had three sisters and one brother.

  They had been introduced to each other by mutual friends at a house party and hit it off straight away. He was a live wire, always cracking jokes, never serious for a minute. He was instantly drawn to her: she was very pretty, warm and bubbly – she loved to laugh and to make other people laugh. They were quite similar people back then, and at first they looked like a match made in heaven.

  In the late Sixties, early Seventies, Dundee was a very poor city. Everyone seemed to be unemployed and there wasn’t a lot of things to do. Money was scarce. But they never thought about problems like that as they had found true love. They dated for a couple of years and things were going fantastically. He was always the life and soul of the party, and she loved her life with him, as he always had her in fits of laughter with his childish antics.

  They decided to move in together as they were both happy and life was a breeze. They got married quite quickly and moved to a derelict flat up a back alley off Hilltown, a big road that goes right through Dundee. The street – Arkly Street – was a row of terraced houses like Coronation Street, with a welder’s yard and scrapyard at the end. The roofs were crooked and had sunk over the years.

  They stayed there for twelve months. The odd argument occurred, but as my Uncle Danny used to say (that’s my dad’s younger brother), ‘Show me a couple that doesn’t argue and I’ll buy you a pint – and that’s a lot coming from a Scotsman.’

  Then Mum fell pregnant in March 1973 with her first child, Tommy, born in December 1973, and again two years later in late January 1975 with her second, Charlie – that’s me. I was born in November of that year.

  In between those two years Mum started to notice a big change in Dad. He was getting more aggressive and argumentative towards her. He would get jealous for no reason at all, and had even taken to locking her in when he went out to the pub. She had seen him fighting with men in town some nights, but that was normal in Dundee at this time. Men sorted everything out with a punch-up at the end of the night if they had a grievance. That’s just the way it was.

  But Mum never thought that Dad would ever turn his anger on her, as they were meant to love each other. And people that are in love don’t lift their hands to each other. Dad obviously had a different view of love, as he was now coming home drunk and beating her and accusing her of having an affair with anyone who looked at her. He was gradually turning into a possessive, aggressive control freak who needed professional help.

  The level of the beatings and mental torture he was giving Mum was beyond belief. He would keep her up for hours, snapping questions at her like an interrogation agent, then kick and punch and sometimes bite her.

  * * *

  I have a recurring nightmare right through my early childhood. I’m hiding in the corner, crouched un
der a table, terrified. I see what he’s doing to her and I can see clumps of her hair on the floor.

  ‘Yi fuckin’ bitch, yi think yi can pull the wool over my eyes?’ He’s dragging my mum across the room by her hair, kicking her in the ribs and stomach. He’s pulling all her hair out and she’s screaming and whimpering, bent over in agony, desperately trying to defend herself.

  I want to look away but I can’t and the scene is branded in my memory forever.

  ‘Please stop it, Jock, let me go. I hav’na done anything.’

  ‘I hav’na done anything. I hav’na done anything,’ he mocks. ‘Yir just the innocent victim, eh?’

  ‘Yi ken I am, Jock.’

  ‘Yir a fuckin’ liar, that’s what yi are.’

  He punches her in the face and I can’t bear to hear her screams.

  ‘Now are yi gonna start tellin’ me what’s really going on, yi fuckin’ slut!’

  ‘Nothing, Jock, nothing’s going on.’

  ‘Nothing, eh? So who wiz that fella eyein’ ye up yesterday – Mr Fuckin’ Nobody I suppose, or scotch mist maybe?’

  He’s now in such a rage that I put my hands over my ears. I want it all to stop.

  ‘It’s all right, Charlie,’ says Tommy, who’s crouched next to me. ‘It’s all right,’ he says comforting me. ‘Go back to sleep.’

  That’s when I wake up…

  * * *

  As I’ve said, living in Dundee it was the norm for men to be fighting every night. Women were used to seeing men beating each other up. But Dad had never given Mum the impression that he’d do that to her from the bond they’d had with each other. So when he started viciously beating her up and trying to take control of every part of her life, it took her completely by surprise. What’s more, she never knew how and when nasty Jock would appear, as there were never any warning signs. He would suddenly just switch.

  It was really hard for women back in those days in Scotland: the men had control over them and everyone seemed to accept that if a man battered a woman, it was none of their business. It was a domestic and that made it acceptable. When I was a little older it turned my stomach to think of the many nights of torture Mum had gone through alone, and it infuriated me that no one ever helped her.

  He’d go to the pub, she’d be in with the kids, he’d come home, beat her up and say she’d been trying to sleep with the neighbour, or the postman, or any man within a two-mile radius. At first it was more verbal bullying and mental torture, and then it got worse with beatings and thrashings. She couldn’t even go to the shops for a pint of milk without being questioned for hours on her return – he battered her so badly that he broke her teeth and nose.

  Over the next few months Mum started to become numb to the mental and physical torture she had to endure at the hands of Dad, but was becoming seriously worried about us kids, and the fact that one night he might throw one of us out of the window, as he threatened he would do on quite a few occasions if she left. That was another thing about Jock – he was a very clever man. He knew exactly what to say to get inside your head and make you so scared and confused that you couldn’t think for yourself. Mum was now waiting for the chance to leave; she had been trying to hatch a plan for a while, but was too afraid of the consequences if he caught her sneaking out.

  Finally Mum decided she’d had enough. Dad regularly went down to the benefits office to claim dole as he was officially unemployed, although everyone knew he worked as a roofer and chimney sweep. One night while he was at work, Mum seized her chance. A few nights previously he had broken her ribs and she had to go to hospital – and that was the last straw for her.

  She grabbed a few nappies, and things that were close to hand, and managed to sneak out. Standing in a bus shelter on Hilltown that night, cradling us from the pouring rain, with tears and mascara running down her face, she swore to herself she would never go back to him. But there was still the problem of us kids. Dad was never going to let her leave and take his kids as well – no chance!

  Even though he didn’t want us, he would still not let her have us. As it turned out, he was at least partly successful, as within a short while he managed to get me back.

  And whatever inner turmoil, despair and anger he was going through, he would make me pay for it for many years to come.

  Chapter Three

  Tug of War

  In 1976 after the breakup Mum and Dad started a three-year tug of war over us kids. There were doors kicked in, fights between uncles and aunts. One incident in particular stuck in my mind and later on in life made me realise that he never just flipped overnight but that he had always been an evil bastard.

  I’m aged about three and Mum is at the social security sorting out her family allowance when out of the corner of her eye she spots Dad. Unfortunately they have both been booked for appointments in the same building at the same time. Mum’s heart sinks at the sight of him but there’s no place to run. Then Dad looks right at her and walks towards her with that evil smirk that she knows so well by now. As he approaches he doesn’t do much at first, just asks how she is and how we are.

  After a short conversation Dad asks if he can hold me, as Tommy’s now hiding behind Mum’s leg with a plastic gun pointed at Dad, saying. ‘No Dad, go away.’

  I can see in an instant the look of fear and hesitation in Mum’s face and then she’s handing me over to Dad and he’s grabbing me like I’m a rag doll. I’m scared, but mainly because I can see that Mum’s starting to cry and it’s making me cry too and I try to reach out to Mum, but Dad’s now holding me in a tight grip and won’t let go, even though he has sworn on us boys’ lives that he’ll give me back to her. Then that look comes back on his face and the voice she’s been so scared of reappears.

  ‘Do yi really think yir getting the nipper back, you bitch?’

  Mum now realises that he’s again managed to twist her mind and sneak under her guard, this time bargaining with our lives.

  He’s far too strong for Mum as he’s a big lump of a man and she is small and petite. Mum is now screaming at the top of her lungs, pleading and begging Dad to give me back to her, but Dad just stands there laughing at her, as he gets off on things like this – you know, watching people beg.

  ‘Please, Jock, geeze um back.’

  ‘If yi come back ti the hoose now, y’ill git yir bairn back.’

  ‘Kin yi jist hand ’im back in case yi drap um.’

  ‘Fuck off yi cow! If yi want um, come and git um.’

  He pretends to drop me.

  ‘Oh, do yi want yir bairn?’

  By now he’s taken me out of the social security office and we’re on the street. He carries me into the middle of the road and then puts me down between the two lanes of traffic, as cars swerve to miss me. I’m lying there, petrified, listening to the screeching of brakes and car horns hooting at me but I’m unable to move, confused about what’s happening.

  ‘Mum…Dad!’ I start to wail and scream.

  ‘Help!’ Mum screams. ‘Somebody please help! Look what he’s dain ti mi bairn!’

  Everyone just walks past, not batting an eyelid. It’s in the middle of town first thing in the morning and not one person even stops to ask her what is going on.

  Dad picks me back up off the road and points at Tommy.

  ‘I’ll be back fir him the morin tae, yi fucking bint.’

  He’s holding me in one hand and has a cigarette in the other. Mum stands there screaming and begging passers-by to help, but her pleas fall on deaf ears.

  Dad is now turning to walk away, throwing his Regal King Size towards her. Mum has no choice but to go back with him. Even though she knows he might kill her this time, the thought of leaving me with him is too much to take.

  ‘Jock, wait, I’m coming!’

  He turns around with that evil smirk on his face. ‘I thought yi might.’

  She walks up towards the house behind him, and is now trying to devise a plan. She will go back, take a beating, then earn his trust. That
way she can wait until he’s at the pub and move us somewhere far away from there before he gets home.

  As for me, I’m getting used to this constant snatching of me by one or other of my parents. It’s like they’re using me as a toy, a possession that both of them want. When you’re growing up, you’re learning to talk, learning to walk. I’m not – I’m just getting dragged around all over the place, listening to women getting beaten up.

  I’m almost expecting Dad to snatch me away from Mum or Mum to grab me again. There is no such thing as routine in my life, as I never know whose house I might wake up in, who will be feeding me or putting me to bed, or whether I’ll get a bedtime story, although on the whole I’m spending more time with Dad than Mum so bedtime stories are definitely out of the question, apart from stories that begin with a clip round the head and end in being kicked around the house.

  Apparently at one point when I’m just one year old my dad even holds me out of a window in an apartment seventeen storeys up – it’s my Michael Jackson moment – and says:

  ‘Do yi want me to let your fuckin’ son go?’

  I later find out that from the age of six or seven months if Mum left the room, I’d start to cry. She’d come back in and say to Dad, ‘What are yi doing to him?’

  So at that early age I must have been very attached to Mum – and also aware of what Dad was capable of doing to me.

  * * *

  About a week after Dad snatched me from Mum in the social security office, he decided to go out with one of his mates, as Mum had lured him into a false sense of security – a trick that she’d picked up from years of living with him.

  I was in bed, but not asleep, listening to the sound of the evening traffic, when I heard her jewellery clanging and footsteps approaching the bedroom door. I knew it was her, I knew the sound of her heels on the creaky floorboards.