Nipper

by Mitchell, Charlie

  As I back her into the corner with my backside, Tommy’s laughing and says, ‘She’s gonna bite your arse one o’ these days!’

  All of a sudden, before I can say ‘No, she won’t,’ I feel her teeth grab my left butt cheek as she’s now pushing me out of the corner and across the room.

  She never breaks the skin though and I will always believe ever after that she understood what Tommy had said, and that she actually has a human sense of humour.

  Tommy and I carry on seeing each other at weekends, one weekend at Mum’s the next at Dad’s. We even have a few good times with Dad, like when we go to Glenshee for a week’s skiing and there isn’t any snow so we have to go up the dry ski slopes. We have these big massive skis with rollers on them, like rollerblades. We’re at the top of this hill and Tommy goes flying down it.

  ‘Look at me, Dad,’ he turns and shouts, ‘look at me,’ and as he’s shouting, he smashes his forehead straight into a barrier and his feet go halfway around it.

  Another time, Dad has this big coat on and slides on a hill and everyone’s pelting him with snowballs.

  Dad’s still football manager for Dundee West. He manages the older kids, Tommy’s age, and plays me a couple of times for the team but I’m really too small – paper thin. One day Dundee West go to play against Arbroath, a town up the east coast, twenty minutes from Dundee – and the Dundee kids can’t believe their eyes: all these hulking great fourteen-year-old Arbroath kids have beards! Most of the time fifteen or twenty kids come back to our house and have a bath and if they haven’t let in more than ten goals Dad gives them all a Mars bar, because they’re all basically crap!

  One of the bravest things I’ve ever done is when Tommy’s over to see me one weekend. Dad’s falling about pissed and finally jumps in the shower. Meanwhile I’m looking for my stick insect. I normally keep it in a jar but it’s managed to get out and could be anywhere by now. I’m looking all over the carpet and up the walls but finally give up and sit and watch TV with Tommy.

  Suddenly the door opens – Dad’s come out of the bathroom and his towel falls off.

  ‘There it is,’ I say, pointing at his willy. ‘I’ve found it, Dad!’

  Fortunately, for once Dad sees the funny side and laughs – but mainly, I’m thinking, because Tommy’s there.

  Dad still works as a roofer and one day he takes me and Tommy with him, along with his friend Hatchy. He’s replacing some roof tiles on a house in a rich area of Dundee called Broughty Ferry and we have to hand the tiles up to him. Dad’s up on the roof, Tommy’s at the top of the ladder while I’m running up and down the ladder with the tiles and Hatchy’s standing at the bottom.

  ‘Tell her I need some water!’ Dad shouts down to Hatchy.

  Now Hatchy’s a really nice guy but he’s a wee shy. So I accompany him as he nervously goes to ask the owner of the house, a middle-aged woman, for the water.

  ‘Would you like it hot or cold?’ she says in this posh voice.

  ‘Jock, the woman wants to know if yi want it hot or cold!’

  When Dad calls back down, Hatchy’s face goes as red as beetroot.

  ‘Hot!’ says Dad. ‘And wi’ a fuckin’ teabag in it.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Bonnie and Me under the Stars

  Dad has been waiting on a new house for a few years, a semi-detached from the council is what he’s always dreamed about. The tenements are good in the sense that all the kids know each other and hang around together and most people can leave their doors open and wander in and out of each other’s houses. Ours are locked because Dad doesn’t want anyone walking in while he’s wasting me or the dog.

  When I’m ten years old, his wish comes true. I don’t know how he manages it but he wangles a three-bedroom semi in St Nicholas Place, a nice street about a quarter of a mile to the north of St Fillans Road with a lot of semi-detached houses both sides of the street. They have big back gardens and a play park at the bottom of the road with swings and a roundabout and the public works shed in the middle. There’s also a big grass area around the park and a barracks where a few years later, at the age of thirteen, I end up going to the cadets. It’s only three streets over from St Fillans Road but it’s a lot nicer than the house we’ve been living in.

  I can’t wait to move out of that house in St Fillans Road. It has so many bad memories for me, and the new house could mean a new start. At the very least it’s a new adventure and maybe soon I’ll have the strength and size to kill that drunken bastard. Those are the thoughts that are creeping around in my head, and I think Bonnie’s thinking the same. As she’s now fully grown and has teeth like a wolf, I’m just glad she’s on my side.

  We move to St Nicholas Place in the summer of 1986. It’s the school holidays and we have to move all the tat that Dad has collected over the years from St Fillans Road into our new place. Some of Dad’s drinking buddies help us move in.

  It doesn’t take long for us to get settled. We decorate with the grant that the social has given Dad. He builds a big long two-foot-high fire surround that goes around three walls and has pre-varnished pine tongue-and-groove around the face of it. It’s a long living room with a window at each end, and he’s put wallboards on the other two walls – don’t ask me why, I think that must be the fashion. It’s like living in a log cabin the amount of wood in there.

  The back garden’s a bonus for Bonnie as she loves to play around in it – and we can also let her out to do her business.

  The kitchen is off the living room, and the stairs go up to three bedrooms and a bathroom. This is the first time I’ve lived in a house with a staircase inside it; in the old place stairs meant piss and graffiti.

  We must be going up in the world, I think to myself.

  Dad still has a car, which I find a bit confusing as he’s been banned from driving for the next 3000 years. I don’t think he ever did pass his test, or even own a provisional licence; he has his own rules and laws, ones that are different to anyone I’ve ever known.

  The car is an old orange Vauxhall Cavalier with thirty dents in it where Dad has been playing dodgems on the way back from the pub over the years. The driver’s seat is covered in cigarette burns and the ashtray is overflowing with butts as he keeps them in case of emergencies. He breaks them all up into a cigarette paper and makes his own, which I actually think is pretty clever.

  The car’s covered in dog hairs as well, as Bonnie regularly moults twice a year. We take her to Clatto Park, which I told you about earlier, where the swans live on the two islands in the middle of this big reservoir.

  Dad will throw a stick into the water so that Bonnie will swim out and get it. I think he’s trying to wind the swans up or get Bonnie to bring one back so we can have swan butties. Don’t panic – she never catches one!

  Then when we’re on the way home Bonnie jumps on the back seat and covers it in wet fur. The smell of wet dog is stomach churning and I can never get used to it. It’s a bit like the old man in the post office that so kindly emptied the contents of his bowels in my face.

  As a kid Clatto Park is my idea of heaven. It’s in the middle of some woods at the back of St Mary’s, about a five-minute drive from my new house. It has a mini manmade beach with boats, canoes and wind surfing. There’s loads of pike and perch in there as well; it has fishing competitions a few times a year. The actual reservoir is surrounded by sloping stones that lead up to a walking path all the way around the top so you can look down on the water. It’s a bit like a First Division football club, where the pitch is the water and the small sloping terraces are the stone areas.

  There’s also one of those zip slides which I love playing on – you stand on a round disc connected to a long bar that you hold on to, then slide down a steel cable and crash into a tyre at the bottom. It’s the tyre that softens the impact when you come to a sudden halt. All around the park are barbecues and benches for sitting on in the summer. You can hire wet suits and life-jackets as well if you’ve got the money, but most
people end up jumping in with just a pair of shorts on, then peeling the leaches off when they get back out.

  Even though the park is brilliant and has a lot going on, a more interesting place for me is a field at the back of Clatto. Dad sends me up there sometimes with a couple of carrier bags and tells me to fill them and come straight back home. But it’s not an ordinary field. It belongs to a huge, scary farmer called Big Ged who has a double-barrelled shotgun and permission to have a pop at anyone on his land or property.

  In between Clatto Park and his field there are pine trees thirty feet tall which are all very close together. The back of Clatto has everything – spuds, veg plots and rabbits, if you can catch them – and the woods are so tightly compact that even the Scottish rain finds it nearly impossible to break through onto the forest floor. It’s always dark going through them even during the day, but it’s worth clambering through the woods because at the other side in the field are potatoes. And not just any potatoes – these are called Kerr’s Pinks.

  They’re about five times the size of a normal spud and as pink as a pig’s snout. They taste brilliant, even raw, if you’ve run away from home and need food, although running away from home is not something I would ever dare do because I’m too scared of what would happen if I got caught and was then sent back to Dad. The consequences and his reprisals don’t bear thinking about.

  But then again, as David Bowie might have said about Bonnie and me, we could be heroes just for one day. And there is one single night when we do get away – our night of freedom together.

  It’s two in the morning, Dad is snoring at the fire, paralytically drunk. I take Bonnie, sneak out of the back door and head up to Clatto.

  We sit on the jetty, where the boats are tied up. I sit with my arm around Bonnie, washing the blood from my face with my free hand. It’s great to breathe the crisp fresh air into my lungs, as the smoke-filled room I’m used to makes it hard to breathe normally.

  I lie back with my head on Bonnie, looking at the stars through the dark night, thinking of what life is going to bring, and wondering whether I’ll be able to survive much longer.

  I can hear fish jumping in the dark and an owl hooting in the woods behind me. I’m scared about going into the woods but I have to get to the potato field as I remember the spuds taste so juicy.

  I picked a huge one and scoff the whole thing as I walk around the reservoir, throwing a stick in the water for Bonnie. She runs and belly flops in, just like a human, then comes back to me and shakes herself all over me.

  It’s brilliant tonight – we’re free for a few hours, Bonnie and me, to do what we want. I take Bonnie back to the jetty and fall asleep next to her until the sun breaks through the morning sky.

  We rush home and sneak back in, petrified about being caught but it’s fine. We’re both back in our prison and Dad’s still in the same position as last night and I never do get caught for my night of freedom.

  Even so, I wish every night could be like this one.

  * * *

  The first time I meet Big Ged the farmer is the last time I ever taste Kerr’s Pink spuds, as it’s the last time I ever set foot in his field. It’s around six o’clock in the evening on a warm summer Sunday night and it’s still very bright out in the open. Me and Calum Patterson are up at Clatto catching bees in jam jars and watching a couple of older blokes fishing.

  ‘Caught anything, mate?’ Calum asks one of the fishermen.

  ‘A couple o’ perch. I had a massive pike on but it snapped the line.’

  Calum puts his hand up to his mouth. ‘Bullshit!’ he says, faking a cough.

  ‘What did you say, yi little dick?’

  ‘Nothing mate, I’ve got a bad cough.’

  I start laughing at Calum. He’s always trying to wind people up.

  ‘What size were the pike’s teeth, mate?’ he says in an innocent tone.

  ‘They were huge like!’

  ‘Was it like Jaws?’

  I’m already trying not to laugh because I know what Calum’s doing.

  ‘I’ll crack your puss, yi wee fanny.’

  ‘You’ll have to catch me first, mate.’

  ‘Keep winding me up, ginger.’

  ‘What are ya gonna dae, set one o’ yir sharks on me?’

  ‘Right, you little fucker.’

  Calum takes to his heels into the woods and the bloke drops his fishing rod and chases after him. I’m pissing my sides as Calum’s now running and shouting, ‘Kin yi no tak a joke!! I wiz only joking.’

  The bloke is actually winding Calum up, as he winks when he runs past me, but I don’t let on as I want to see how far Calum will run. Finally the bloke comes walking back without Calum as he’s too tall to get through all the low branches that Calum glides under with no problem.

  ‘See ya lads, good luck,’ I say.

  ‘Yea, see ya wee man.’

  I head off into the trees in the direction of Big Ged’s field, shouting at the top of my voice, ‘Calum it’s me, Calum where are yi?’

  ‘Charlie! Ahhgh you scared the shit out of me then.’

  He’s up a tree four feet from my head and screaming my name in the pitch black. He gets down from the tree and we can see light poking through the bottom of the branches.

  ‘This wiy, Calum. Come on.’

  ‘This is no the wiy oot.’

  ‘I know, we’re going to Big Ged’s field.’

  ‘No chance, Charlie, he blows people’s fucking heads off.’

  ‘No he doesn’t, I’ve nicked aboot forty bags o’ his tatties and I’ve still got a head!’

  ‘You could do with a new one.’

  ‘Shut it, carrot top.’

  ‘OK, Plug.’

  I’m not going to get into a slagging match with him as I haven’t won one yet. Oh yeah! My ears stick out – hence the plug comment.

  ‘Shut up, Calum, are you coming or are you a pussy?’

  ‘Give me a bowl of milk and I’ll tell you.’ He’s very hard to have a serious conversation with.

  ‘OK then, clever arse, I’ll go and get some free tatties and you head back to that lad that wants to put you on the end of his hook and I don’t mean his fishing hook.’

  ‘What hook do ya mean?’

  ‘A fuckin’ left hook – dowball, come on.’

  We start walking towards the field. Calum has decided to come with me as it’s a bit safer – well, as far as he knows.

  ‘Charlie!’

  ‘Yeah, what is it?’

  ‘If Farmer Ged blows your legs off, don’t come running to me!’

  ‘Shut up, you half-wit,’ I giggle.

  We climb over the barbed-wire fence that surrounds the field and go on our mission. Calum is looking a bit edgy, sticking close behind me and peering all around like a meerkat on its back legs.

  ‘If I hear a bang I’m oot o’ here.’

  ‘If you hear a bang, Calum, ane o’ us will be horizontal.’

  ‘Shut it, Charlie, I’m already turtling.’ He means he’s shitting himself.

  We have to walk quite a bit into the field as the side next to the woods has been plundered by the whole of St Mary’s. Nobody ever goes more than halfway across as the fear of becoming target practice is too much. Not me though, I’ve coped with a lot more than a little double-barrelled shotgun in my life. At least in a field you have the chance of escape.

  ‘Right, Calum boy, this will do here. Get digging.’

  ‘I’ve not got a shovel.’

  ‘With your hands, yi dork.’

  ‘Alright, there’s no need to get personal.’

  I can’t even look at him without laughing. Every time he opens his mouth I can feel my cheekbones against the bottom of my eyes.

  ‘Charlie!’

  ‘Yeah, what is it?’

  ‘Is there a point to what we’re dain’ here?’

  ‘Of course, mate, we’re on a mission.’

  It isn’t just that. I’m trying to score some brownie points with Dad and
I knew Calum wasn’t arsed about the spuds so I’d have double the amount to take home.

  ‘I think we have enough now, Charlie.’

  I turn around and he has twenty or so great big spuds cradled in his pulled-up jumper, and behind him is this massive figure that reminds me of a silverback gorilla.

  It’s Big Ged. He looks like a cross between the Jolly Green Giant and Quasimodo. He has a brown cap on, a grey, hand-knitted jumper with holes in it, and a shotgun leaning on his shoulder pointing up towards the sky.

  We both just freeze, as there’s no chance of escape with one of those things being fired at you. Calum lets go of his jumper and all the spuds land at his feet. I just keep staring at the gun, hoping he won’t lower it in my direction.

  ‘It was his idea, mister,’ Calum pipes up. ‘I dinna even eat tatties.’

  Big Ged just keeps standing there staring at me with his big black beadie eyes. His pupils are massive – you can’t see the actual colour of his eyes, but they look a bit like great big shiny balls of chocolate, like Minstrels.

  ‘Have you got anything to say, thief?’

  That’s Ged’s first words as he looks at me.

  ‘We’re homeless, mister,’ I say quickly. ‘We got kicked out of the home we lived in, and we’ve not eaten for days.’

  His angry expression instantly changes – I think he’s looking sorry for us, even saddened. I’ve got him hook, line and sinker and I’m just praying that Calum doesn’t open his gob and ruin the story I’ve made up.

  I’ve become a brilliant liar, as I’ve had to tell so many for Dad over the years.

  ‘Pick them tatties back up,’ says Big Ged, as he turns to Calum.

  Calum looks confused and looks to me.

  ‘Go on then, it’s alright,’ I say.

  The farmer turns back to me. ‘I’ll never see you in this field again, will I?’