Nipper

by Mitchell, Charlie

  The fights are giving me a buzz and I don’t care if Dad batters me when I get home as I’m now finally learning to duck and dive his punches and kicks. I’m still not old enough or brave enough – or maybe stupid and reckless enough – to dare to lash out at him, as I’m still too frightened of him, but I’m getting much better at defending myself. You might call this long overdue, but I’m making him miss and he’s getting tired a lot quicker than normal. Plus, of course, we’re both getting older and time’s now definitely on my side, no problem. I used to just lie there and take the hours of torture, but now I’m getting quicker, and wiser to when he will attack.

  The times I spend rolling around with people my own age are now getting more and more frequent. And weapons are being added. We will all break brush handles and wooden fences down to arm ourselves, then walk down to the football pitch like a mini drunken army, marching close together.

  ‘Y-M-B, who are we? We are the boys who rule Dundee.’ At the top of our lungs, so the other gang can hear us coming.

  One night we’re running up the middle of the pitch, towards the Dales gang, when I see this silver thing flying through the air at the last minute, coming towards my face. There’s no time to get out of the way as it smashes me in the forehead.

  I fall backwards onto the grass and can hear a hissing noise. I think for a moment it’s my brain making the noise, until I look beside me and see a can of Tennant’s lager with a pin-hole in it.

  Yep, you guessed it. I’ve been hit with a full can of beer and yet again I have another egg sticking out of my forehead. But things like that don’t bother me now, as it’s a battle scar to prove you never ran. As long as it never hits the back of your head, you’re fine.

  I sometimes take Bonnie to the gang fights with me. Even though Dad gets away with beating me, Bonnie never lets anyone else get away with it. There are never that many people hanging around if I have Bonnie with me. She’ll stand in front of me and show her teeth – not growling, just lifting her top lip to unveil her huge wolflike nashers.

  A few of the lads say they’re thinking of joining the Cadets and ask me what I think. I’m up for anything by this stage – life is starting to get more interesting and exciting. Only a couple of years ago, I just wanted it all to end. When I saw the bodies of people who had thrown themselves off the multi-storey tenements I wanted to be one of them. But now I don’t want to die any more, as my fear has turned into hate and anger.

  So we join the Blackwatch Cadets in St Mary’s. We’ve got army uniforms and we’re ready to fight for the country. Well, until they wake you up at five in the morning to go on a ten-mile jog. I’m up for the war side of it, but I don’t join it to run after people. I thought that was what a gun was for, so you didn’t have to chase people.

  I’m enjoying this period of my life, but Dad is drinking a lot more heavily and any money he has now seems to go on drink. I don’t need him any more though. I have petty crime to pay for my army uniform and boots, and I’m doing a paper round to save to go to England. It’s a two-week holiday with the Cadets to a place near Southport called Altcar which has a rifle range. Cadets from everywhere go there once a year to learn how to fire real guns, go sniping through the grass and go on five-mile runs at stupid o’clock in the morning.

  In the end before I go I have to call Mum to borrow some money as Dad’s found my stash, and spent it all on drink. I am in a quiet, controlled rage about this but it’s so much of a habit for me to keep my feelings about Dad bottled up that as usual I say nothing about it to Mum. I don’t need to tell her anyway, as she’s probably guessed already. It’s just one more thing that I log in the back of my brain for the day of reckoning. Besides, at this point I just want Dad to die, so I don’t want to tell anyone anything about me and him, especially Mum, as I don’t want to incriminate her or involve her in what I’m planning to do to him.

  Mum’s always good with money and gifts. I love having Christmas presents from her – it’s always designer trainers and tops or something that you can never afford yourself. She isn’t loaded though, it’s through a catalogue. Dad buys me things as well, but they’re normally accompanied by a black eye or burst nose a couple of hours later, if anything is marked or has a slight scrape. I think he’s forgotten that I’m a teenage lad, the way he goes on.

  ‘What the fuck is that on yir trainer?’

  Grass, you wanker! You should go outside more if you’ve forgotten what it looks like.

  When I get back from Altcar I’m told to hand my kit back and I’m never allowed to go again. They’ve kicked me out of the Cadets. When I went there and joined no one told me some arsehole a couple of years older would decide to scream in my face from around an inch away while spitting all over me. What did he expect me to do, kiss him?

  I did give him a kiss – it was of the Glasgow variety.

  On my return I decide to look for something else to keep me occupied. Bonnie had got out one night alone and ended up pregnant to some other dog. So I can’t really take her up to Clatto or near anyone as she’s getting a bit temperamental. So I join back up with The Rogues again.

  This time around we do things that are a little more weird and stupid, bordering on dangerous, like Shitealight! You pick up loads of dog dirt in a newspaper, put it on someone’s doorstep, set the paper on fire, and then knock on the door and hide behind the hedge watching through the gaps to see the outcome. People open the door, see the fire and try to stamp it out, covering their slippers in dog shit.

  Another one is tying two doors together. In the Closies, the tenement blocks, the doors are opposite each other. We’ll get some washing line or rope and make it about five inches longer than door-to-door, then we’ll tie the ends to the handles and knock on both doors. After that we stand there and hurl insults at the people as they pull the rope back and forward, screaming that we’re dead when they get out.

  I’ll be standing there in fits of laughter as Calum Patterson’s favourite trick is to push his privates between his legs to make him look like a women. Then he’ll turn his back to the door, bend over, and talk in a woman’s voice.

  ‘Has anyone seen my washing rope?’

  I’m on the floor, as the men behind the doors are foaming at the mouth with anger, pulling each other’s doors back and forward.

  ‘You’re a dead man, dirty little bastard!’ Then the two house-owners will start getting frustrated with each other.

  ‘Stop pulling the fucking door, yi half-wit, I’m pulling mine.’

  ‘Wha are you calling a half-wit!’

  We then take the rope off as both doors close, and walk downstairs as if we had left them tied. The men will come to the window when we’re outside.

  ‘You bastards, better take that rope aff, or yir gonna git it.’

  Calum will open his jacket. ‘What, this rope?’

  Then we run like the wind as they slam the windows to come after us.

  Full Moon is another one. There’s a place called Brackens, at the back of St Mary’s, and the house windows are nearly down to the floor, so we’d round up six or seven of us and bare our backsides and press them against the window and knock.

  As the curtains open we’d bust into a chorus of ‘Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone’.

  I can’t imagine what it must be like to open your curtains and see seven bare arses staring back at you. I do apologise to anyone who’s had to endure that sight as I’m not sure whether Calum ever cleaned his.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The Puppies

  I’ve been playing football throughout my childhood and I’ve become quite a nifty player. Most people in Dundee are football mad, as there’s nothing else to do except have a punch-up or play football. My school team has even reached the Dundee Schoolboys’ Cup Final.

  I play for the Lawside first team and we’re due to play Morgan High in the final. I’ve scored a few goals in the rounds before and am playing well when we reach the final. The manager of our team is my Ma
ths teacher, a big chubby man with glasses. I’ve always got on quite well with him and his is one of my favourite classes.

  Me and a few of the lads get there early as all our families are in the stand at Tannadice, Dundee United’s home pitch, and we get into the dressing room before the rest of the lads. Another lad and me pick up a strip and put a top on, but when the manager comes in, he puts us on the bench and never plays me at all in the game. Just because we put the top on. We get beaten 4–2 and I’m glad – that idiot has watched me score goals for the whole competition and left me out to make an example of me, for reasons only known to him.

  I’ve never imagined another person could ever make me feel as bad as Dad does, but he’s succeeded. I have always sworn that one day I will play at Tannadice because I hate being beaten, and the feeling I have on this day will probably stay with me forever, as this was to be my one chance to prove to Dad that I’m not a useless waste of time that should never have been born, as he reminds me time and time again, and to make him proud of me.

  And that Maths teacher has taken that away from me. He did it out of some stupid principle, to discipline me for putting that top on, but it was way out of proportion. The punishment most certainly doesn’t fit the crime and he ruins the biggest day of my life.

  I’ll never forgive him for that, ever!

  Bonnie has now had her puppies and most of my free time is spent looking after them and her. There are six of them and they are absolutely beautiful. Dad says we should wait until they’re ten weeks, then sell some and give some to people who already have their names down. Well, that’s the plan, but then the fireworks start.

  It’s a Saturday night around four. I’m at St Kilda Park playing football with some of the lads. I hear a fire engine coming up the road and then another. They’re coming past the park and turn up towards my street, St Nicholas Place.

  Everybody starts chasing it to see where it’s going, so I walk up behind them thinking nothing of it as I want to get back to the game. ‘Charlie, it’s your hoose!’ I hear one lad shout.

  I take to my heels up the street and as I get there all the windows are blowing out. My first thought is the puppies and Bonnie. The firemen are smashing the front door in and the flames are now licking out of the top of the windows.

  ‘Where’s my dog?’ I scream in a fireman’s face. ‘Is my dad still in there? Where’s the puppies?’

  The next minute I turn around and see Bonnie being held back by one of the neighbours. She’s yelping and trying to run back into the house. Several people are holding different puppies in their hands.

  ‘Is my dad still in there?’

  I am praying that he is.

  ‘Just stay back, son,’ the fireman snaps. Then out of the smoke comes Dad with the last of the puppies, covered in black smoke with its little head limp, like it’s dead. The fireman grabs the puppy from Dad.

  ‘You fucking idiot, you could have been killed.’

  Dad’s bent over with his hands on his knees, coughing his lungs up, and the fireman is giving the puppy mouth to mouth. Then he puts an oxygen mask on it, and the little thing starts coughing.

  I’m made up but at the same time secretly disappointed that Dad escaped. He’s gone into that blazing house six times to save these little things! I am shocked. Such a horrible bastard has just done something that only a few people in the world would have done. Risked his own life for a few puppies. I don’t know how chuffed he is later when he finds out it was one of the puppies that knocked the electric fire over to set the house up while he was at the shops.

  Everything we own has been destroyed and he blames me later, as he says he’s had to cancel his insurance policy to get some money to buy me school clothes. Forgive me if I don’t shed a tear. I never asked to be brought into his fucked-up world.

  After that day Dad is different – or maybe it’s because I’m getting older and don’t pay as much attention to what he says when he’s drunk. We’ve moved back down to St Fillans Road again, but this time it’s another three-bedroom semi. The council says he can move into it until the other one is fixed up again. But when the time comes to move back, he point blank refuses, as he likes where he is now. I think that’s because it’s closer to the shops and nobody has heard any beatings or screaming. It’s a new place to beat me up without rousing suspicion.

  We’ve sold or given away all the puppies. We name the last one Smokey as it nearly died of smoke inhalation. He’s a cracker, but he’s been left with a cough a bit like whooping cough for the rest of his little life, poor thing.

  And then there’s Bonnie – my Bonnie. It happens very suddenly, one summer’s day.

  We’re up in this idyllic place in the mountains of Perthshire called Cloonie Loch. We’ve pitched the tent in a secluded spot and there’s a twenty-foot square of gravel leading into the water. I’m standing waist high in the water watching shoals of perch swim around my legs and marvelling at being free of the war zone of home. The sun is gleaming in the water and all is peaceful.

  Bonnie’s in season again. It’s really hot and she’s been lying under a tree to keep out of the sun. This guy’s kid grabs her by the ears and I tell the man that she’s in season, and to get his daughter away. As you know, when Bonnie’s in season you have to be careful of her and I can see she’s getting annoyed, but neither the man nor Dad takes the warning. They’re both sitting drinking their beers and chewing the fat and don’t pay any attention.

  Bonnie never actually bites the girl; she just grabs her face with her big jaws as a warning to go away, as she did with my backside that day, only grazing the skin on her chin and forehead. But when the man leaves, Dad decides to batter her with a tree branch as she runs around yelping. Then he turns on me.

  ‘That fucking mutt o’ yours is getting put doon when we git hame.’

  I spend the night in the tent praying that this is just one more of his idle threats.

  It’s the third week in July 1990 and school’s nearly over for the year. The next day I’ve forgotten all about what Dad said he’d do to Bonnie – until the moment when I come home from school a few days later and let myself in the house.

  There’s an odd kind of silence when I walk in. Usually Bonnie bounds up, jumping up and licking me as she comes to greet me. I know she’s still on heat so she may not be as affectionate as she usually is, but where is she? I search the house and then go out into the street shouting out, ‘Bonnie, come here, girl!’

  But she doesn’t come and when Dad comes home I think he’s looking shifty; when I ask him where Bonnie is he slurs and mutters something about giving her to a farmer while I was at school, because she bit the little girl.

  The blood rushes up from my toes to the tips of my hair. As I stare at him swaying in his chair with that smirk on his face, I’m devastated, inconsolable, seething with rage. I run into my room and crash onto my the bed and burst into tears.

  Tonight for once Dad leaves me alone. But all I can think of is Bonnie, my dog, my closest friend, the only creature who has ever shown me love, and now she’s gone.

  The next day is Saturday, the weekend, and the house seems so quiet. I cannot get used to the fact that Bonnie’s not with me. The weekend drags on slowly, painfully, and over the next few weeks I have a strong feeling that there was no farmer and that the evil bastard has probably killed her and buried her somewhere. I have no way of proving it but a remark he makes a few months later seems to confirm that suspicion.

  ‘That mutt finally got what she deserved,’ I hear him mumble one drunken night.

  The day Dad gives Bonnie away is, for me, the last day of my childhood. He has taken away my best friend, my companion and protector, who was always there for me through the long dark nights of torment. I try to imagine that if Bonnie is alive she’s happy and free, and at least safe from any more of Dad’s beatings. But in my heart I know she’s gone, and I also know that the time for payback has arrived. And it’s not long in coming.

  Chapter
Twenty-Four

  Red Light on the Stereo

  I’ve arrived back at about two minutes past eight and Dad is drinking again, hammered, really, really drunk.

  ‘Where have yi been?’ he starts questioning me. ‘What have yi been doing?’

  This goes on until three in the morning. He’s getting drunker and drunker, drinking more and more vodka. I’m falling asleep, trying to keep myself on the ball in case he suddenly attacks, but he never does this particular night. It’s strange, he never does anything. He just sits there and sits there and eventually dozes off, still holding his vodka.

  I wait ten, fifteen minutes to make sure he’s out, then finally go to bed and fall asleep.

  The next minute I wake up and my head feels like it’s being blown apart. As I start to come round it dawns on me that it’s Dad – he’s stamping on my face. My head is getting shoved into the bed and when I look up I can see him stamping on my face with both feet – he’s wearing green and white trainers and I can see blood on the front of them – and he’s shouting ‘Raaaaaaghhh!’ – really loud. He keeps slipping off me and falling and then getting up and doing it again.

  And then I come to myself as I’m just out of sleep and he says, ‘Just checking yi were awake, son!’ and then walks back out of the room, leaving me there with blood pissing out of my nose.

  What the fuck was that? I think.

  This happens a few times. He usually kicks me once in the face and walks out – but on this particular occasion he jumps all over my head. I think he’s less prepared to attack me when I’m up and awake and dressed, as by now I’m fifteen years old and I’m bigger and stronger, especially since I’ve been doing the kick boxing. Jumping on my head while I’m in bed is a much safer bet.