Nipper
Page 6
Shane’s one of those people who after you stop he’ll keep it going. He wound up this little lad Willy for hours and hours. Maybe it’s something in the family genes. Shane just enjoys spinning out a joke, while Dad enjoys spinning out the torture.
Anyway, Willy’s in his bunk bed and Shane goes up and sticks a football sock over his arm and puts it over the top bunk of the bed and grabs Willy’s mouth with it.
‘Ahhhhhhhhhh!’ Willy screams. He’s only wearing his Y-fronts and terry towelling socks, and he goes sprinting through the corridor past a shocked barman for a second time.
‘There’s a murderer! Phone the police!’ Willy screams frantically at the women in reception. ‘He’s in my room. Phone the police!’
At that moment we stumble in after him, laughing our heads off, and give Willy the good news – it wasn’t the murderer after all but his twin brother. Willy stares from one to the other of us in disbelief and then finally realises we’ve been winding him up all along.
The next day, we go mountain climbing – well, it’s really hillwalking as given the size of us anything bigger than a molehill looks like a mountain. They always have to entice Shane to climb up the mountains because he’s overweight, and I won’t say no to a bit of enticement myself, so they bribe us with Mars bars. But me and Shane end up getting lost and bored after the box of Mars bars runs out, so we try to take a short cut back to the hotel. They have the mountain rescue team out searching for us for six hours and when they get back we’re playing pool in the poolroom.
Of course I end up getting battered for it. Shane’s fine though; he only gets a mouthful from Dad, but if you shout at Shane he just looks at you as though you’re daft, so there isn’t much point.
Chapter Eight
Twenty Pound Note
You can only compare Dundee in November to the Arctic or maybe Siberia – the wind is enough to take you off your feet as Dundee is built on a hill (the Law Hill). It rains ten months of the year and snows five months – yes, you do get them both together.
Dundee is made up of around fifteen different areas called schemes, and every scheme has a gang, each of which is known by a set of initials – you have YMB (Young Mary Boys), YKH (Young Kirkton Huns), YLF (Young Lochee Fleet), YHH (Young Hilltown Huns), FS (Fintry Shams), WS (Whitfield Shams), AP (Ardler Pirates) and many, many more. At the back of Dundee is St Mary’s and Kirkton leading on to the bottom of the Sidlaw Hills. It’s probably one of the most picturesque places, leading up to Coupar Angus, Dunkeld, Clunie Loch and the rest of Perthshire – all up to the mountains that spread across the north of Scotland.
It’s a beautiful place, but throughout my childhood in the 1980s all I seem to be aware of is the pain, misery, violence and drink-fuelled torture that are rife around me. Every third kid I know is part of a single-parent family who are being abused or neglected by their parents, keepers or guardians and no one bats an eyelid about what’s really going on.
It’s November 1983 and a really bad winter has started early. The roads are covered in snow and ice and it’s freezing. We have mastered a fast way of getting to the shops from the Closies or tenements. It takes about five minutes to walk there, but in the winter we wait for the cars coming round the corner to hitch a ride. It gets dark really early as well, so no one can see us kids hiding behind the hedge. We’ll wait until the cars slow down as they turn the corner, then run out and grab onto the bumpers and hitch a free slide in a sitting position down to the local shops, then let go and slide for about twenty yards until it stops.
On this particular night, Dad has asked me to go to the shops and get him some fags and milk. He hands me a twenty pound note and tells me to hurry back.
‘And don’t piss around wi yir daft mates – come right back.’
So I set off on my mission – every time I do something for Dad it’s a mission, not an errand. When I get outside all the lads – my gang, shall we say – are all out chucking snowballs at each other and waiting for cars to come around the corner so they can take a trip on them.
Stevie G is a year younger than me. He’s a bit of a snot nose kid but he’s always up for anything – you can tell him to do something and he’ll do it, no questions. He’s the first one I see when I come out the close and I ask him if he can come to the shops with me and hang on a bumper. He jumps at the chance and we both take off on my mission – it’s a bit like a James Bond mission – which has now become his mission, to return with the goods. We get to the shops, get the things my dad wants, and head back homewards, Mission Accomplished, with the goods in the bag, looking for a car to hang onto.
We hang onto a car going up towards the tenements, but it speeds up a bit too fast and I’m finding it hard to hang on and when we fly past the tenement I have to let go or who knows where I might end up. Then Stevie follows suit and we both roll about twenty yards up the road like a couple of bundles of tumbleweed. Luckily neither of us are injured so we brush all the snow off and head back down to the close, laughing about our close encounter.
I tell Stevie I’ll be back in five minutes, as I have to give Dad his things – oh yeah and thank God I never burst the milk or that would really be a disaster. I run upstairs to the front door, open it and take the long, slow walk up the hall and into the living room where Dad’s watching football.
‘Did yi get the fags and milk?’
‘Yep,’ I say, all proud of myself. ‘There you go, Dad.’
‘Put the milk in the fridge and stick the kettle on, will yi.’
‘Alright, Dad.’ I run into the kitchen and boil the kettle, make a cup of tea and take it to him. ‘There you go, Dad. Can I go back out to play now?’
‘Yeah, on you go.’ He looks up at me. ‘Just one more thing, have yi put the change on the kitchen table?’
My heart goes bang. Wait a minute. I am frantically searching my pockets for the £17 change. I had it in my hand when I came out the shop and after that I grabbed the car bumper and then fell off the car up the road.
Oh shit! I think to myself. Where’s the fucking change?
‘Yi better be fucking joking,’ Dad’s saying. He can tell by my face that something’s up.
‘I think it’s in the kitchen, Dad.’
Oh please God, please be in the kitchen.
He stands up out of his chair. The sweat is running down the sides of my head; my heart is pumping, my palms are sticky with sweat, and I’m saying ten Please Gods a second in my head.
‘Yi think it’s in the kitchen?’ he says in a weird crying, angry, shouty voice. It’s probably the scariest voice I have ever heard. ‘Yi better pray it’s in the fucking kitchen. Get out this hoose and find it, and don’t come back in until yi do. That was my last twenty pounds, yi fucking half wit.’
So I run to the kitchen – nothing.
I shoot out of the door and down to the road where I fell off the car. It’s now suddenly turned into Mission Impossible. All the kids in the area help me search frantically for this money, from the tenements to the shops, covering every lump of snow on the way. But it’s gone forever and so am I. I try to walk as slow as a snail back home because I know what’s coming – well, I think I do, as Dad will always change what he does to screw with my mind. He’ll play these mind games and try to confuse me.
I walk into the house and shuffle slowly up the hall towards the living room and push the door open, praying that he’s found it on the side or something. I think he knows I have lost it by the way I come in. He’s sitting on the windowsill obviously watching me turning over every lump of snow and ice from the window.
‘Sit on the couch,’ he says.
I walk over and sit down.
‘What did I tell yi before you went to the shops?’ Staring at me with those big beady eyes.
‘You told me to stay away from my mates and hurry back with your fags.’
‘Correct, now did I tell yi to lose my last twenty pounds – yi fucking moron?’ He is talking in a calm voice that I have never heard b
efore. Usually he’ll get drunk and then start on me for not doing dishes or for being two or three minutes late home from school and beat me up for a few hours or spit in my face, but this is a new one. I have never seen this before. It’s like Question Time with insults.
‘Are yi retarded or did yi do that deliberate to push my buttons?’
I don’t know what to say. If I say no, then he’ll reply, ‘What no, yi’re not retarded or no yi didn’t do it deliberate?’ Then if I say ‘No to both, Dad,’ he’ll come back with ‘Fuck yi. Are yi a retard or did yi do it deliberate?’
I’m gonna have to answer this or I’m dead.
‘I’m a retard, Dad.’
‘Yir my son, so yi must be calling me a retard – is that what yir saying?’
‘No Dad, I did it deliberate.’
‘What did yi dae it deliberate fir, Charlie?’
‘No I mean, I didn’t do it deliberate but—’
‘Well, which is it? Are yi tryin’ to be clever wi’ me?’
‘No, Dad—’
‘So yi’re sayin’ I’m stupid, is that it?’
I try to think what I’ve just said. Did I call him stupid? I can’t think.
‘So now yi canna even be bothered ti gee’ me an answer, eh?’
‘No, Dad, I’m not trying to be clever with you.’
‘You’re naturally stupid, like yi think I am – is that what yir sayin?’
Well, this goes on for hours. To say I am confused doesn’t begin to describe it. Imagine some young kid who hasn’t slept for three nights is brought into a police interrogation room and then subjected to hours of questioning about a murder he hasn’t committed. By the end he’ll be begging to sign the confession statement. That’s me. I’m that kid. Imagine a hard-boiled police officer who no longer cares whether he gets a result or not as he simply gets a buzz out of inflicting mental torture for its own sake. That’s my dad.
So in the end I start crying and ask if he can please just hit me because I don’t know what else to say. I’m falling asleep with the questions, as they’re so confusing.
‘Oh, so you decide your punishment, do ya? OK yi fucking little cunt, yi lose my last few bob and you decide what yir gonna get.’
He walks over and sits beside me on the couch while taking a swig of a vodka and Coke, then he puts it down on the table.
‘Give me yir hand.’
‘Why, Dad, what for?’
‘Give me yir hand,’ he says in a calm voice.
So I put my hand out towards him reluctantly. He takes a vicelike grip of my wrist and pulls it towards him and sinks his teeth deep into my fingers.
Ahhhh! They start bleeding and I scream at the top of my lungs.
‘Please Dad, let go.’ His fanglike teeth are now piercing through the skin below my knuckles as he makes a loud, growling, angry noise, shaking his head from side to side like a pitbull with a doll in its mouth. He then lays his thirteen-stone body on me, covers my mouth and starts biting different parts of my body from head to toe. I can feel his teeth piercing through my trousers and skin, and can feel the warm blood trickling out of all the areas he has bitten. At one point I think I try to bite his hand to get some air as I can’t breathe – and that makes him ten times worse.
This goes on for about forty minutes. I am trying to scream but he’s too strong, and with the smell of vodka and smoke now blowing in my face, I’m beginning to feel sick. It’s like being attacked by a pack of wolves. My face has been bitten, so have my arms, legs, chest, back and hands.
He finally gets off me and calmly picks up the salt and vinegar from the coffee table beside his bottle of vodka and pours it over the bite marks he has made all over me.
The pain is unbelievable. He is now standing over me, emptying the salt all over my face. He doesn’t say a word as I try to block the salt from hitting the hole in my face. Then the worst words I have ever heard come spilling out of his mouth.
‘Maybe I’ll just have ti eat yi since I’ve got fuck all in the cupboards! Yi little bastard!’
I’m lying there praying for God to give me a heart attack or let me die quickly before he eats me. I have never been so scared in my life. So much so that I think God must have heard me because for some reason Dad suddenly stops – he changes so quickly it’s like someone has taken over his body. He sits back in his chair and has another drink of vodka and just leaves me lying on the couch for a few hours, until he falls asleep.
Something has changed tonight as well. This night is the point in my life when I stop caring about anyone. My trust in the world has gone and if anyone ever touches me from now on, they’ll have to suffer the consequences that follow. When he can tell me he loves me one moment (usually when he’s sober in the morning, when he’s seen what a mess he made of me the night before) and then do exactly the same thing to me the following night after a few vodkas, it’s enough to make me never trust another human being again.
Occasionally after he’s beaten me up really badly he’ll stop drinking for a day or two – maybe out of remorse – but the sober periods don’t ever last long. He can’t handle not drinking. He can’t handle me looking at him like that when my face is still a mess and he soon falls off the wagon again.
There are just a few times when he’s really hammered when he’ll give me a genuine hug of affection, but then he’s just as likely to follow it up by slamming me across the room.
And all the while the beatings keep coming. For years to come I take many more of them, with broken ribs, a fractured skull, black eyes, and mental torture, sometimes for ten hours at a time. I spend most of my childhood years stuck with a drunken, sadistic sociopath with little regard for human life.
I don’t know if you have ever been stuck in a situation with someone on your own. It’s just you and them in your own world, with them controlling every word you say and every move you make. I can only compare my childhood to being held captive in a concentration camp or torture chamber. The beatings I receive are not just a couple of punches or kicks. They are sometimes twelve-hour interrogation sessions, with nipping, biting, poking in the eyes, and pulling clumps of hair from my head.
Sometimes Dad will actually be laughing at me as I’m flinching and this can go on for a couple of hours. At times like this, my mind tends to drift off to other places. Even though my body is still there my head is somewhere completely different. That’s how I think I deal with it. It simply doesn’t occur to me that what is going on in my life is highly abnormal. I even assume that it’s like this for everyone – that children the whole world over experience the same kind of sustained torture that I go through day after day.
I don’t understand why the neighbours never do anything, as when he beats me up marble ashtrays get smashed through the front window, and once he even throws a TV at me and it lands in the street. Between the ages of five and seven I’m beaten virtually every night – and after that every two or three nights – but the beatings get more ferocious. And when his girlfriends are there we get half each.
On one occasion he pours bleach on me; another time he tells me to drink it. I just hold the bottle to my mouth without drinking it and when he takes a gulp of his vodka I just throw the bleach bottle on the floor behind him. He’s that drunk he doesn’t even notice.
Another time, after he has kicked me into a corner, he rolls me up in the rug and then rolls it towards him and sits with his feet on it; he ends up watching TV with me trapped in the rug.
‘This is comfy,’ he says, looking down at me.
On yet another occasion I am strangled so hard that I pass out and he bursts my eardrum. When I come round he says, ‘You’re a good little actor, I’ll give you that, the shaking on the floor looked quite real.’
At that stage I have obviously had a fit through lack of air. But from this particular night, when I genuinely believe that he is going to eat me – devour his own son like a cannibal – I begin biding my time, waiting for the day when I am the same size as him.
Chapter Nine
A Boy’s Best Friend
One reason my childhood is so strange is that Dad is a totally different man when he’s sober. That’s what’s so confusing about being a kid in my house. He’ll take me camping and fishing, and to football matches to Tannadice Stadium to watch Dundee United.
He stands at the segregation fence between both sets of supporters and shouts abuse at them. I sit down on the wall next to the pitch eating a Wallace’s pie and drinking hot Bovril, watching and listening to our supporters behind one of the goals, in an area called the Shed. I always want to go in there and bounce around and sing, but I’m too small.
The atmosphere is brilliant, fantastic. The most popular song is ‘Let’s All Do the Shed Boys’ Dance – na na na na – na na na!’ then everyone behind the goal goes crazy, like they’re in a moshpit.
At one game Dad is having an argument with a stranger in the crowd about how crap Ian Ferguson is. He’s heckling the player the whole game until Ferguson smashes the ball in from forty yards out. It’s one of the best goals I’ve ever seen.
The stranger turns to Dad with a smile on his face.
‘What about that, mate?’
Dad looks him in the eye, trying not to laugh and says, ‘That was his attempt at a back pass!’
Then we move to another area of the ground with Dad laughing away to himself.
If Dundee United win, we go to the pub. I walk through all the bodies with my Coke, waist high to everyone else. I can’t see anything but I love the singing and the atmosphere – I don’t even mind the cigarette smoke which is sometimes stifling.
If they lose we go to the off-licence, which is called Party Time, for vodka and Coke, and then go home. At times like this I have to be particularly on my guard, watching Dad like a hawk, waiting on him to change, because I know I’m going to get it.
As well as camping, fishing and football, Dad also gets me the best friend I have ever had in my life: her name is Bonnie, she’s six weeks old and she’s a longhaired Alsatian puppy, jet black. At this time in my life, at the age of eight, she’s the best thing that has ever happened to me. I’ve had a dog before, called Lucky, but he got run over by a car – a bit ironic that I gave him that name really, as he clearly wasn’t that lucky! Oh yeah, and I had had a hamster but my next-door neighbour tried to see if it could fly by throwing it out of the bedroom window.